It is getting increasingly rare to find genuine science-fiction movies these days: most turn out to be action-thrillers in a sci-fi setting instead. However Director Duncan Jones’ “Moon” (2009) turns out to be the real hardcore stuff, for once. It reminded me both of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Oddyssey” and Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running”.
Why? Because it depicts a lone astronaut, Sam Bell, admirably played by Sam Rockwell, manning a moonbase and troubleshooting things when the automated mining machines break down. He is assisted by a robot, Gerty, whose voice (Kevin Spacey) is remarkably similar to that of the dangerous computer HAL in 2001. I couldn’t help but be suspicious of Gerty as a result, and it turns out I was both correct and incorrect… Spacey’s Gerty had me wondering throughout the whole movie.

Moon (2009) Trailer

Because of the setting, actor Sam Rockwell has to carry the entire movie, and he succeeds brilliantly. Other actors appear in video messages and the like, but for the most part, it is just him, on his own, 250,000 miles from Earth and looking forward to getting home at the end of his three-year contract. And going a little space-crazy… or is he?

With only two weeks to go, he takes a buggy out of the base to fix a mining machine that has gone wrong, but gets involved in a collision and ends up trapped in the buggy. He falls unconscious.

And wakes up back in the moonbase. Gerty is reviving him… but now there are two of him…

From there, things start to get complicated… so I’ll leave the spoilers out: you can watch the movie.

What is the film about, exactly? True science-fiction is basically subversive, in that it looks at features present in society and projects them into a future world to see what is wrong (or right) with them. In this case, the film is looking at corporate greed and (without mentioning it) the legislation that currently makes it compulsory for companies to look after the bottom line ahead of all other values, such as, when this goes too far, human life. As with many movies these days, the company regards Sam as expendable, but the multi-layered depth of that expendability in this case comes as a big shock as the plot slowly unfolds. Having said that, there is some hope at the end: it isn’t all bad news. I like happy endings, although the other sort tend to have more impact, I’ll admit. The ending of this film is mixed, which is perhaps more realistic.

This is a slow-moving, cerebral movie. If you want action, look elsewhere. If you want 93 minutes of proper sci-fi, however, this is the place to look. The film had a low budget of just US$5,000,000 and just about broke even at the box office due to lack of proper distribution by Sony. Probably, it will more than double this with DVD sales and syndications. I hope so. Action movies are good fun, of course, but a bit of thinking now and then is good for you. I’ll give this movie 7/10, knocking a bit off as it is, yes, a little slow, but I didn’t get bored or tired watching it. Far from it.