Suffocating and breath taking, a one of a kind space drama

Rating: 8/10 (15 October 2013)

Earth. A home for all of us, a doom for some few. Engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), is doing some set ups on a Nasa satellite, orbiting the Earth, in company of astronaut Kowalski (George Clooney) and some Indian guy. Sandra is feeling sick of being in space, if only the poor girl knew about what's coming next... After a few minutes of jokes and awkward space walking, the Astronauts are warned by Mission control (Houston as usual) that Russians have fired a missile into space to destroy one of their satellites, causing multiple debris to fly at high speed into their direction (the debris destroyed other satellites on their way causing a snowball effect, that will eventually destroy all satellites and space stations around the Earth, including the ISS: if there were no Russians, life would be boring). And so it begins. The Indian guy is taken out immediately and spectacularly (it was a second character anyway, no biggie), Sandra uncontrollably spins out of orbit and drifts into deep space, only George stays in control, of course. The rest of the movie is a story about survival in impossible space vacuum conditions, a fight against emptiness, a fight against our own self.
From the very first moment you dive directly into the suffocation, panic, despair and uncontrollable fear displayed by the characters, very well mixed with quite impressive sound and visual effects. The movie, although not without some unrealistic scenes, feels highly real on your skin, is very well paced and takes your breath away quite a few times. The show will tear you apart between magnificent views of our planet and the blood freezing context of life in space. After this, it's good to feel alive and on Earth! Definitely worth watching.