Humanistic space odyssey

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2009)

It's nice to have some decently crafted science fiction still being made. The increased availability of CGI and digital effects for even low-budget productions along with its better quality has finally reached the level where we can do something important with it: focus on the human.
Moon is a movie about an astronaut on a three-year solo job in space. He is harvesting moon rocks for energy (something explained concisely at the beginning), and staves off boredom by exercising, growing plants, building a model of his home town, and talking to his wife via belated signals. As he nears the end of his term, he begins to hallucinate and gets into an accident. When he wakes up, he finds himself. Literally, as in he finds himself still crashed in the accident and saves himself from a cold lonely death. The problem is, now there's two of him, a crashed harvester unit, and a robot who seems not the least bit logically put off by his doppelganger presence.
Sam Rockwell gets to do the Dead Ringers duty here and play off himself, which is fun, and also brings a strong sense of dynamic to what was almost a movie about a single guy alone in space. Duncan Jones does a good job directing his first feature film, and on a tight budget creates a realistic lunar landscape that you'll see no flaw in. Kevin Spacey is perfect for the voice of GERTY 3000, a kinder, gentler, and more humanistic HAL 3000 with a smiley face instead of a big red eye. Music by Clint Mansell will be playing in your ears long after you leave the theatre.
All around, a quiet science fiction hit. It could have done without the newsfeed ending that turned a rather flat political message onto a perfectly hopeful and open ending. GERTY's personality or programming was a little too deus ex machina, but on the other hand was a refreshing change from the general technophobic cliché of most robots straining to follow orders at the expense of the sanity or lives of their cares. The rest is all nitpicking.
--PolarisDiB