Moon is a film by Duncan Jones, the son of David Bowie, and his first film shows promise that he will may make a similar impact in the world of film as his father did in the world of music.
Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, a lunar astronaut who has been living on the Sarang moonbase for almost 3 years. During that time he has maintained the base and the harvesters which are gathering Helium-3 from the soil of the moon. What I find interesting is that there is some actual science behind this notion. It's been 90 years since we first learned that Helium-3 did actually exist (the possibility of it's existence was mentioned about 10 years prior). The problem however is that it is a very rare isotope on Earth and is slightly more common on the moon (but not as common as the film suggested). In the present day this isotope is highly sought after for continuing research into nuclear fusion whereas in the movie this goal has been achieved and is now a sustainable power supply on Earth.
From a certain point of view you can also say that the workforce they use on the lunar base is also sustainable with a vast number of clones which replaces the "waking" clone every 3 years. I presume the idea that the clone starts to degenerate after 3 years is an imposed limit to stop them from going mad or from realising what they are. I find this has draws parallels with Blade Runner in that replicants were given short life spans and were forced to labour in jobs no one else wanted to do.
The point I realised that Sam was a clone was literally moments before we see the Sam which was in the crashed rover (whom I'll now refer to as Sam #1). I hadn't actually noticed that Sam #2 didn't have the plaster on his hand despite the obvious view of it when he was waking up. It didn't take long after that to figure out the plot for the rest of the film as the interesting antics of a lone astronaut descends into a typical episode of "The Outer Limits" (I'm sure there was a similar story line once but based on Mars). I've got nothing against "The Outer Limits" and found the modern one to be quite entertaining most weeks, but the film started off as something better and unusual.
To some degree it was entertaining to see Sam #1 going through denial, anger, and eventually despair as he realises Sam #2 is right about neither of them being the original Sam and slowly starts to suffer from some sort of degenerative disease. What I would have liked to have seen covered in more detail are the visions that Sam #1 had near the beginning when he burnt his hand and then caused the crash. The vision he saw looked like Sam's daughter at an age similar to how we see her in the video call later on which makes me wonder how come his hallucinations were of her at that age. I think what this is suggesting is that at some subconscious level that Sam really knew what he was and what was going on.
Casting Kevin Spacey as GERTY, the computer which is there to help Sam seems to have been a moment of genius - he really does play the perfect computer and is very reminiscent of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey although he has a blue "eye" instead of a red one. The scene where you first see Sam using the rover across the lunar service reminded me of Space 1999 for some reason, though I've not yet figured out why.
Overall I'd say it's not a great film, but is still a good one that is well worth a watch. In all honesty I can see myself seeing the film again sometime to see how it holds up on a second viewing and to see if there's anything I missed the first time round (similar to how Fight Club is a much better film on subsequent viewings). If you're a science fiction fan then I think this is pretty much required viewing.
