Unconventioanl roles for Foster and Damon.

Rating: 8/10 (16 August 2013)

This movie was good. It entertained. It told a story. It's just too bad that Jody Foster plays such a negative character. Casting Jody Foster as a heavy just does not work. She simply is not believable as a prissy, power-hungry bureaucrat. Foster has to be the hero, not the villain. She's the wrong person to die, and not get revived. As for Matt Damon, he's out of character too, with mixed results. What this movie needed was a young Sylvester Stallone or a Dolph Lundgren to play Max. Not that Foster and Damon's performances are not good, they are, but they're typed casted already and that's a huge hurdle for them to overcome. In fact, Foster looked wonderful in her business outfit, so neatly did it fit her. Also, William Fichtner performs effectively in a relatively small role as a corrupt robot manufacturer. The story itself is good, although a bit contrived, with the rich people portrayed, of course, as being pampered and self-indulgent, and the poor people a bunch of victims scrounging to survive. The point is made: there is economic injustice and it can drive people to commit acts of desperation. The movie includes imaginative depictions of life on a space station and of space travel as being routine. Whether that will ever happen is a subject for conjecture, but the movie suggests that space flight, at least, low orbit space flight, can be done economically. Anyway, this is a good movie that keeps the audience's attention and is worth watching.