In the far future, humanity has split into two, the humble and downtrodden Colonials, and the wicked Exiles. It’s funny, you might think that “Exiles” has a sympathetic ring to it and casts them as the underdogs, while Colonials sound like the bully-boys of the universe, even though it’s not that way at all. Connotation is a powerful thing – in Star Wars, you could easily tell that the Rebel Alliance were the goodies and the Galactic Empire the baddies, just by hearing the names of the factions. That’s without even getting into such one-sided splits as the X-Men vs. the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or the Justice League and the frankly brazen Injustice League. It doesn’t really matter though – what’s in a name? – because, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself rooting for the Exiles anyway – they’re far stronger, cleverer, and better-looking than the mopey Colonials. Plus they live on the Moon and surely that makes anyone automatically more appealing.
Undaunted by these many disadvantages – his inherent blandness is another one – our Colonial hero Silas (Greg Kriek) sets out on a personal mission to…do…something. He brings along a Star Wars-style robot for comic relief purposes. I know when I’m doing important missions I like to be incessantly badgered by a sickeningly cutesy flying box that regales me with disgusting and illogical stories about robot piss (???). Along the way Silas misplaces his memory, but he does pick up some other companions, none of whom can really act so there’s no danger of Silas being upstaged as the generic white male hero. Props, however, go to Sean Kanan, whose cranky, deaf veteran Zeke is daffy enough to leave a lasting impression, and in so doing, giving the film its most memorable scene as Silas and Zeke speak over and at cross-purposes to one another. It’s a nice respite from what represents the bulk of Colonials, which is chases and shootouts and all the sort of CGI-enhanced action-adventuring that you might well enjoy in – to invoke it for a third time – a Star Wars film. There’s a strong tradition of low-budget science-fiction – the acclaimed Primer, for instance, mostly consists of two blokes and a garage – but you have to build that type of story around ideas, because ideas don’t cost any money. Even the original Star Wars, the 1977 film, is slow and clunky in its action scenes, courtesy of a budget that today would be considered downright shoestring, and mostly succeeds because of its timeless story, likeable characters, and the technical genius of its editing and score. It is heartening, the way relatively cheap CGI allows amateur and independent filmmakers access to whole genres that would once have been off-limits without the resources of a major studio, but we’ve yet to reach the point where CGI is so cheap that an independent film can be a vehicle for the kind of dazzling light-shows and dizzying action scenes you’d see in a Star Wars (or an Avatar, or a Marvel, et cetera). The comparison is overused, but films like this one are still coming out looking like the cutscenes from a PlayStation 2 game. Ultimately you can file the film under “POSJ: Piece of Space Junk”, as one of our characters would have it.
★☆☆☆☆