1h 37m
Director: Duncan Jones

This film is a sci-fi mystery that is best enjoyed the first time without any spoilers. It's good - if you haven't seen it yet I'd watch it first before reading any further! I mean it, I intend to spoil the crap out of it!

Sam has been maintaining the lunar base, collecting and sending payloads of helium 3 back to Earth for almost 3 years. He's excited to return to his life and family on Earth when his shift rotation ends. He's been having a few hallucinations, one of which causes him to crash his lunar vehicle into one of the helium 3 harvesters.

Sam wakes up in the base. One of the harvesters isn't working, GERTY the base robot won't let him leave so he tricks the robot into unlocking the doors. He discovers the lunar vehicle crashed into the harvester and returns to the base with the person he found inside who looks exactly like him.

It's not long before both Sams begin to realise they are clones and you get to view their characters in various stages of acceptance and head-in-the-sand denial at different points in the movie. Sam has a wife (Tess) you see and Sam thinks he has a daughter which adds quite an emotional twist to the narrative. Sam Rockwell does a superb job of playing both characters and the editing doesn't leave you questioning whether you are really watching 2 clones, it feels like 2 different people at separate points in their lives.

I'm going to call the oldest clone 'old Sam' and the most recently awakened one 'new Sam'. New Sam concludes that there must be other clones stored on the base (as there wasn't time for the Earth command centre to send a new clone to the moon before he was awakened) and procedes to search the premises.

Old Sam soon realises his health is declining and the clones have an expiry date. He also finds out from GERTY the base robot that everything he remembers about his life is just a memory implant. There is a great deal of melancholy for this Sam as it dawns on him that all his hopes and dreams are essentially artificial.

The Sams go exploring together and discover a communications tower that is blocking the live signals to Earth.

GERTY helps Sam access the video logs of earlier clones which confirms for him that the pod they enter for the ride home in fact terminates the clone. This adds a bit of moral character to the robot who up until that time has seemed to be on the side of the corporation that runs everything. Old Sam discovers where they are keeping replacement clones.

New Sam awakens another clone as he plans to return to Earth but doesn't want the rescue team alerted to his exit from the base.

Old Sam drives outside the range of the jammer and calls home, he discovers that Tess died a while ago. New Sam watches a replay of the video call and realises the same thing.

As a rescue team is on its way from Earth and they certainly won't be happy to find 2 clones alive and well at the base and because old Sam is now in very ill health, new Sam waits until he dies and places his body back in the lunar vehicle he crashed in.

New Sam uses the helium 3 launcher to return himself to earth.

The sets are great. Everything looks lived in and some of the problems you might imagine the character facing (like hair cuts) are included as part of Sam's daily routine.

The table tennis scene where both clones play each other is excellent and will probably have you wondering exactly how they did it.

The piano score for this film (by Clint Mansell) gives me chills.

It's worth noting that the director Duncan Jones is David Bowie's son, although I expect he's a bit bored of being introduced to other people that way!

There is no fat in the script for this film as every scene advances the narrative in some way.

Some of the models look a bit janky but you might not believe what a good job they've done with such a low budget ($5 million), which wouldn't even cover the catering on some modern films. If you're interested in how the visual effects were done I recommend watching this short documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4KrBgC1HlA

As you can tell from my enthusiasm, this is one of my personal favourite movies (it's in my top ten) but film is subjective so see what you think. If you like science fiction and a good mystery then I reckon you'll really enjoy it!



Trailer: