An accomplished debut Sci-fi from Duncan Jones. Sam Rockwell is Sam Bell, a lone mining operation worker on the moon. In two weeks, after 3 years of the solitary job with his only companion Gerty (a less mean version of Hal2000, voiced by Kevin Spacey) in a space camp called Sarang (which means 'love' in Korean- I guess in the future, the moon is owned by evil Koreans with Hello-Kitty aesthetics), he will be going home to his wife and daughter. After having visions of a strange girl on the routine checkup on the mining machine, Sam crashes his Lunar vehicle, only to wake up in the infirmary inside the base. Apparently he has some memory loss. And even though he is physically fine, he is confined to the base by the Lunar Industries company heads via recorded message and by Gerty. Somewhat rebel headed and going stir crazy, Sam ventures outside and finds the crashed vehicle and himself(?) and brings his döppelganger back to the base. This is where Moon gets interesting.
The look of Moon owes a lot to classical Sci-fi of 70's and 80's- a slightly update version but it still retains its beautiful retro authenticity without going CG crazy. Unlike The Clone Returns Home, which came out around the same time or its spiritual mother Solaris, Moon is less perceptive to the characters search for identity and spirituality but Rockwell's dual performance makes up for it. His comic timing is impeccable and gives the character(s) his down-to-earth, regular joe humanism. The most heartbreaking scene is when dying Sam #1 talks to his grown up daughter and finds out he is also a clone. First stunned, Sam #1 comes back to the base as a broken man while unfazed Sam #2 who knows himself a clone, plans for returning home with the first one in tow.
It seems like a logical step for a child of David Bowie making a Sci-fi movie called Moon. It's a quite unique movie and I liked it a lot. I am looking forward to Jones's future projects.
