Man on the Moon

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2009)

Ground control to major Tom? Moon is directed by 38 year old Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. So maybe it's not a big coincidence that his first feature film is Moon with Sam Rockwell.
I think Rockwell is a much under-appreciated character actor of the past 15 years. I'd first dismissed him when I saw the Green Mile and believed that this guy was basically a typecast actor who always played the role of the out of control crazy guy. How wrong I was. Rockwell has been amazing in movies like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Snow Angels and Frost/Nixon. He's definitely not a one note actor.
In Moon he goes where Tom Hanks went in Cast Away and Wil Smith went in I Am Legend. He is basically alone on screen except for the comfort of his HAL-like computer, Gerty. The difference between Rockwell and Wil Smith is that Smith was laughable in I Am Legend and Rockwell can hold his own on the screen.
I've often complained in the past that science fiction has turned into science fiction action. We only need to look at most of Wil Smith's more recent work to see that this is the case. Even when movies are adapted from old source material like "I Am Legend" and "I Robot", the movie becomes an action-packed, ray-gun totin' adventure where the body count is high and the story is limited.
This isn't the case with 'Moon'. It's a pretty old fashioned sci-fi story which kind of has a Twilight Zone episode feel to it. This isn't to say that the sets, production design and special effects aren't great because they are, but they never overwhelm the story.
There were a few sequences where I was looking at it trying to see if I could see the strings and wires but then I stopped looking because the story was actually pretty engaging. This movie could have actually been done on a much lower budget and still been as effective.
The story is pretty simple and is predictable at times but it's still fun to see Rockwell on screen. There are a few surprises of course and at the end we're left wanting more. That's a clear sign of a good movie in my books.