Moon (2009)

Moon (2009)


Dir. Duncan Jones


3/5 Stars


Summary: Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) has spent that past 3 years on the moon alone gathering Helium-3, which is meant to help diminish Earth's power issues. Sam's only real company is GERTY (Kevin Spacey), a computer/robot that helps run the station. With only 2 weeks to go before heading back to Earth to be with his wife and kids, Sam gets into an accident while checking on equipment on the moon's surface. He wakes up in the infirmary and is informed by GERTY that the rescue team, Eliza, will be coming to clean up the aftermath of the accident. After he has recovered, Sam makes an unauthorized trip outside the station and makes a startling discovery. From this point, he begins to question his sanity, the company he works for, GERTY and even his own identity. While trying to work through all the confusion, Sam continues to focus on his one main goal, which is to get back to Earth.

***Spoiler Alert***
Review: This film was recommended to me, but before I watched it I took a look at the trailer so I had some idea of what the movie was about. There really isn't much action/movement in the movie, which meant that the acting needed to be stepped up. Unfortunately, I thought the acting was mediocre with a few better moments along with some not so great ones. The whole movie felt like a mixture of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The 6th Day". On the one hand you have GERTY, who really is just a more mobile HAL and has a handful of emoticons to display his "emotions" while on the other side you have the entire cloning idea where after one dies, a copy is created or in this case "awakened" to replace the old one.

As usual, if there were to be a villain or antagonist, the company/big business uses cloning as a shady means of cheap labor since it appears that the clones have a shelf life of 3 years. It is unclear as to how the original Sam Bell fits in, whether he willingly allowed the company to do this or if it was done without his knowledge. What I found interesting in the film though was how GERTY held some human elements. He was programmed to aid Sam, but it seemed as if there was an actual friendship that had formed between him and perhaps several of the clone Sams throughout the years.

Despite only running for 97 mins, the film had its long points and it felt like it was lacking something. Although the idea was interesting and it was well put together, it just fell short.

Final Thoughts:

• I'm curious as to how GERTY got the new clones from under the station to the infirmary because it seemed like their bodies were kept in pull-out drawers.
• I didn't realize until after the movie that Sam Rockwell also played Guy Fleegman in "Galaxy Quest".
• I liked how Rockwell's character went through different emotional stages as he began to understand the truth of what was really going on and who he was.
  
• I came out of the movie thinking that it wasn't that bad of a movie, but nothing about it really reached out to me.