Movie Review: Moon (2009, Directed by Duncan Jones)

Something just seems a little off about director Duncan Jones’ debut film Moon. It has been marketed as a kind of cerebral sci-fi pic, playing mostly in art houses. It emphasizes theme and character over special effects. I am normally a champion of thematically-engaging movies in which visual effects are not the focus of attention. Unfortunately, I’m not able to champion Moon, though, because it doesn’t fully commit to its own themes.

Sam Rockwell plays astronaut Sam Bell who has been sent to the moon for three years to mine Helium-3 for a major corporation. In doing so, he is supposedly helping to reverse Earth’s energy crisis. As the film opens, Sam is just a couple weeks shy of his scheduled return to Earth. However, as might be expected from a man who has spent the last three years in complete isolation, he begins feeling strange and possibly becomes delusional.

A film such as this succeeds or fails on the lead character’s performance. Critics have generally been praising Rockwell’s solo outing as the lone astronaut on the dark side of the moon. I must confess that I did not find him particularly engaging. In fact, I was downright bored most of the time by Rockwell’s austere acting style. I never really engaged with the character, and therefore never cared that much what happened to the ill-fated astronaut.

My bigger problem with the film, though, has to do with an M. Night Shyamalon-style plot twist in the movie’s second half. I won’t reveal the twist here, but it seemed inexplicable and downright unreasonable to me. I do not demand that every last detail of a science-fiction piece be realistic, but it should at least follow the logic of the universe it creates. The main problem I had with the film’s twist has to do with motivation. We have been given no real reason to believe that the characters would act the way they do following the plot twist.

I applaud Jones’ efforts to make an intelligent film on a limited budget that attempts to engage with some interesting moral issues surrounding science and technology. We need more movies in this vain. The fact that first-time director Jones did not succeed with Moon doesn’t mean that he is doomed to failure forever. I feel sure that he has a good film in him, and perhaps we will see that next time.