Moon

I’ve had my eye on Sam Rockwell for a while, ever since Choke.  He’s a very versatile actor, and he’s flexed his ability in a wide array of genres: dark comedy with Choke, political/historical with Frost/Nixon, and now sci-fi/thriller with Moon.  He and Kevin Spacey share most of the attention here, and Kevin Spacey’s just supplying his voice, so this is nearly a one-man show, and Rockwell really steps up to the plate.

The movie’s got a good twist to it.  I won’t ruin it here, but I will say that while the twist was well done and not too far-fetched, I did kind of see it coming about two or three scenes before it happened.  Perhaps for those reasons.  Still, the twist was done well and the movie still stood on its own without it.  A lot of times, I’ll see a filmmaker rely entirely on the twist hold up the whole film, which never, ever works.  But here, the twist is done well.

Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie, directs the piece.  He’s been trying to play down his lineage in the promotions for this film, as he’s hoping to stand on his own, rather than make it on his father’s name.  If he keeps making film this intriguing, he’ll soon have his wish. 

Moon takes place in the near future (a few decades) on a mining station on the Moon.  I’m always interested in how films portray the future, and Moon’s vision doesn’t disappoint.  The big fault can be that people expect far, far too much from the future, but Moon’s future is very realistic, and I could easily see us there in some decades.  Both technologically and ethically.  The film makes asks some hard questions about the relationship between corporations and individuals, the value of life and memory, and nature of identity itself, something I really wasn’t expecting going into it.  In fact, this really isn’t even a thriller so much as it is an existential riddle wrapped in a science fiction movie.

Moon is good, but know going into it that’s it’s not the sci-fi thriller you might think it is.  It’s still great, and still has plenty of thriller elements in it, but there’s more thinking involved than one may expect.  Go for that, because it certainly doesn’t disappoint there.