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Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a blue-collar worker on the dark side of the moon in a future where we've discovered an energy-producing element far from home. With only the companionship of his loyal robot partner named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), Sam spends his days monitoring giant harvesting machines, sending shipments back to Earth, and counting the days until he goes home to his loving wife and baby girl. He's on a three-year assignment and the film picks up with just two weeks to go. For years, the live satellite link has been down, so Sam has to communicate with his family via tape delay with messages going back and forth. To say he's isolated would be a massive understatement.
Of course, just as Sam can see the light at the end of the space tunnel, his world comes crashing down around him. He starts to have unusual visions of a woman even when he knows he's alone. And then he has an accident while tending to one of the harvesters. When he makes it back to the station, he finds another Sam Bell (also played by Rockwell), a younger, healthier, stronger version of himself who claims to be there to start his three-year assignment. What the Hell is going on? Is Sam going crazy? Or is he literally being replaced by himself?
Debut director Duncan Jones (the son of David Bowie) walks a fine line with Moon, alternating between a sci-fi mystery and more of a mood piece like Solaris. Don't go to Moon expecting anything approaching the Star Trek experience. That’s an action film. This is a drama. Moon is thinking man's science fiction, more concerned with ideas about identity and isolation than phasers or Romulans. Consequently, it will be a little dry for some viewers. And even for those of us who love intellectual science fiction, the film sometimes feels a little too self-conscious and slowly paced. It runs just over an hour-and-a-half but feels at least half an hour longer.
Those flaws of Moon are vastly outweighed by both the interesting ideas on display by Jones (who came with the story) and Nathan Parker's screenplay and by one of the best performances of 2009 from the great Sam Rockwell. This fantastic character actor has stolen scenes for years, but he's literally the only face in Moon. We see glimpses of other people on video screens, but Rockwell is not just in every scene, he's usually talking to himself. And what I truly love about Rockwell's performance, and Jones deserves directorial credit for this too, is how he distinguishes between the old and new Sam Bell. Three years in isolation does a lot to a man and Rockwell brilliantly brings the age, health, and personality differences to life. It's a stunning performance.
What's truly remarkable and laudable about Moon is the risk-taking of the entire project. It's a one-man science-fiction show. Not exactly the most marketable or easiest to make genre on the market. Movies as daring as Moon should be applauded before all little films are replaced by safer, hipper models of themselves.
Rating: THREE AND A HALF BONES
Reviewed by Brian Tallerico (MovieRetriever.com Film Critic)
Release Date: June 12th, 2009
Rating: R
Starring: Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey
Director: Duncan Jones
Writer: Nathan Parker
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