When it comes to ambitious low-budget sci-fi, Moon, from first time feature film director Duncan Jones, makes for a solid case study. Made for only $5 million and starring Sam Rockwell, Moon is spectacular in terms of visuals, but the story doesn’t have the legs needed for a feature length film. Instead, this feels more like a 60-minute-or-less story stretched into 97 merely to fulfill its time requirement. The concept is imaginative and certainly interesting, but it tends to drag considering there is only so much story being told.
Moon revolves around the lonely life led by Sam Bell (Rockwell), an employee of Lunar Industries working in a mining base on the surface of the moon harvesting helium energy. His only companion is a robot named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) — a nod to 2001‘s HAL — and sporadic video messages from his wife. Sam is coming up on the final days of his three-year contract and is ready to get back to Earth, humanity and his family. Unfortunately a momentary hallucination causes him to crash his lunar rover into one of the harvesters, setting off a chain of events Lunar Industries did not count on.
Comparisons to 2001, Blade Runner and other genre defying sci-fi films have been bandied about by all critics and in terms of storytelling those comparisons are accurate, but as for the story itself you will be quite disappointed if you raise your expectations that high. The best part of Moon is the idea behind it; where the story came from and where it is going, but neither are offered here. Unfortunately, Moon is a jailbreak film without the chase or the opportunity for the prisoner to clear his name. Turn 2001 into a 90 minute space walk or watch Blade Runner without the final 30 minutes and you have Moon. Sure, there’s a spark, but the fire is never fully lit.
Moon, however, does remind us science-fiction doesn’t have to always be about universal warfare and can, in fact, touch upon loftier subjects. This isn’t to say the script reaches new heights, but it is certainly trying even though it doesn’t make an attempt to conceal its twist, hoping the overall message about humanity is enough to keep viewers interested. While the idea is intriguing, not enough is done with it to ever get fully invested. As a matter of fact it can actually get quite boring with the film’s only saving grace being the performance of Sam Rockwell.
Rockwell inhabits almost every single frame of this movie and is asked to carry a heavy load while doing so. Acting opposite a prop for most of the running time and empty space for the rest, it’s a tribute to his talents we believe what we are seeing. But Rockwell’s ability to play awkward characters in unique situations is hardly anything new. His performance here is exactly what you would expect, but even he isn’t able to keep the interest level alive once this story has run its course and begins operating on vapors near the end.
Overall, Moon is a passing interest that will most likely excite dedicated sci-fi fans thanks to its operation outside the norm, but that isn’t enough to say it truly makes the film anything special. To say a movie is derivative of the classics before it is one thing, but to actually attain such a status is another.
