Never make the actor(s) talk over a swinging punching bag. It's irritating.

Rating: Null/10 (23 March 2010)

Sam Rockwell had annoyed the hell out of me in "Confessions of a Confused Mind" or "The Confusions of a Confessed Killer" or "The Serial Minds of a Confessed Confuser" (or whatever Clooney's first turkey was called), playing his character as if he had graduated from John Travolta's School of Shameless Overacting & Clowning Around, so I was a little wary of watching "Moon". However, this being one of few potentially promising sci-fi flicks, I had to give it a try.
Fortunately, Rockwell annoys only in a handful of places, as in the scene in which the two clones are having a communication problem due to the fact that the new clone can't keep his hands off a punching bag. It was the punching bag making too much noise - hence not allowing the poor viewer to hear the conversation - that really annoyed me, but that was the director's fault, naturally, not Sam's (for once). Needless to say, Sam was in much safer hands this time around: Clooney seems to have the uncanny "ability" to bring out the worst in any thespian. Any director is an improvement after George. Any.
Actually, can we even consider Clooney a director?
"Moon" is an enjoyable sci-fi drama, a refreshing change from the chop-sokey, space-cadets/marines-going-yo-yeah, monsters-going-ghhrrgaw sci-fi action garbage of recent years. Not all the story elements would survive a closer scrutiny, logic-wise, though. Kevin Spacey, doing the voice of the slightly gay computer, had been programmed to help the clones no matter what. It even allows Sam to re-boot it. Orders coming directly from the company's bosses generally seem to have lower priority: this makes little sense. Also confusing is how the older Sam clone could possibly have had visions of his teenage "daughter", when he only had memory implants of the time when she was a baby. That would include the supernatural into the equation, but I didn't get the feeling that the writer of "Moon" was going for that. Still, this one could be explained away...
There should have been more shock and disorientation in the way the clones react to each others existence. But even that can be rationalized away through some more-or-less cockamamie genetic-manipulation argument, so I'm fine with that too.
Harder to explain would be why the company would go through such lengths - and such risk of having their image ruined/damaged - to create a mini-army of Sam clones instead of hiring normal personnel. The argument that "clones take away the need to train new employees" seems rather thin, certainly insufficient. The fact that clones don't get paid is also a flimsy reason, considering how little one man would cost as compared to the great deal of profit that must be coming out of this energy-related venture.
This begs the question: if this future Earth is so advanced - to the extent that they can make near-perfect clones - then why didn't they just hire robots? That would certainly avoid the additional cost and trouble of sending a repair mission after an aging, dying, very ill clone starts making errors, such as crashing vehicles into expensive machinery. Sam's 3-year expiration date (and I assume it's not controllable) creates hazards every 3 years, right?... So why not replace him every 24 months...
Why would they even give the clones memory implants? Why not just make them behave like robots: do your job and shut up.
I am also struggling with the fact that a Sam clone could so easily leave the base and fly off to Earth. Wouldn't the company make it impossible for anyone to leave the base without their permission, especially considering the secret they hide on the Moon?
Then again, being a mindless sci-fi fan, I am willing to overlook all these Swiss-cheese holes.