Rent Moon on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Duncan Jones (story), Nathan Parker (written by)
Directed by: Duncan Jones
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey (voice), Dominique McElligott, Kaya Scodelario, Matt Berry, Benedict Wong
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his compute GERTY, sends Earth parcels of a resource that has diminished our planet's power problems.
Verdict
A small scale sci-fi movie that's plenty entertaining. With only one main character, this manages to stay engrossing from start to finish, providing plenty of surprises and questions along the way. It does much with a little, and the script has a lot of depth with plenty said between the scenes. So many sci-fi movies rely on a large scale and extensive CGI to hide flaws. This movie doesn't need to do that.
Watch It.
Review
I like a sci-fi movie where the story can hold its own. The premise is simple, Sam (Sam Rockwell) is the sole engineer on a moon base that harvests helium 3, an element that has solved Earth's energy problems. Sam oversees operations and equipment.
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| Sam Rockwell plays Sam |
Alone on a base for such a long stretch drives you a little crazy with no human interaction. Sam doesn't have enough hobbies to fill the time. His only interaction is with a robot Gerty (Kevin Spacey, voice). When Sam begins to have hallucinations, his simple routine becomes much more complicated. That's when the questions for the viewers appear as well. If you've seen this movie there are a few things you will catch on the second watch, but all questions will be answered eventually.
Sam's mission is a bit of a ruse. At first it seems like some kind of dream, and Sam's earlier hallucinations certainly provide a foundation for that. The twist of this movie keeps you in limbo for a bit, but what's going on is much deeper.
This mission begins to fail spectacularly. It's really just happenstance and bad timing. The underpinning of the entire mission comes down to corporate greed and cost cutting. Even this hitch in the mission will be course corrected and restarted.
The thing about this movie is that it's a small focus and small scale. Even in the future corporations are looking to cover their investments and save on costs. The future doesn't always have to be fighting aliens and preventing Earth's destruction. I really like how this focuses on something that's mundane in the grand scheme. Science is advanced, but it can't do everything. It's a solid story that doesn't rely on big set pieces and CGI to cover for a lack of well developed plot.
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