Sam Rockwell is probably one of the best and most underrated actors working in Hollywood today. The name may draw a blank to many, but if you were to wrack your brain back to 1990’s live action “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, you may recognize a twenty-two year old Sam in a scene stealing performance as ‘Head Thug’ (“Regular or Menthol?”), or slightly more recently as the double crossing villain, Eric Knox, in “Charlie’s Angels”; He also plays the endearing Guy Fleegman, the television extra who gets dragged along for an intergalactic adventure in “Galaxy Quest”. Chances are you’ve seen him in something over the years, but Rockwell is so adept at playing the common man, and making that character his own, that you might not recognize him from role to role. “Moon”, hopefully, will change all that.Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the only man stationed on the Moon in the near future with the task of overseeing an energy harvesting facility. That’s right, the only man stationed on the moon. With the exception of 4 characters seen over a video monitor, Rockwell is the only human presence on screen for the entire duration of the film. Rockwell’s charisma and control over the audience is spellbinding.
With only two weeks to go in a three year contract with the company that stationed Bell, thing begin to fall apart. Bell becomes feverish and begins to hallucinate a young woman at strange moments. His computer and only companion, GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) does his best to console Bell, but things go from bad to worse when Bell suffers a concussion and wakes up to find a duplicate of himself on the Moon.
Has Sam Bell lost his mind? Is he not actually alone on the Moon? Is he a clone?
The final answer is simple and straightforward and raises a number of ethical questions concerning the preservation of the human race. Sam Rockwell, as I said, is spellbinding as he deftly plays two characters, both claiming to be Sam bell, on screen at the same time.
This is a huge recommendation for anyone who would find a small, low budget independent sci-fi film that follows the same vein as “2001: A Space Oddesy” a compelling Friday night movie.
Oh, did I mention it’s directed by David Bowie’s son? He goes by the name of Duncan Jones.
2 comments:
You've convinced me to NETFIX this flick. Thanks
MG
Yeah, being an intern from a visual effects company I know, yet have not watched this movie. We are in the process of making a scifi war movie in which I'm a clone and we do many things similar to that in "Moon." I heard that his performance was outstanding yet the beginning was slightly slow.
Post a Comment