Science fiction movies have taken the public by storm year after year. The current top grossing film of the year AVATAR is proof of that. And yet there are many smaller sci fi films that get less attention but are picked up by fans of the genre. Such is the case with PANDORUM.
In the future space is running out, populations are growing and a new home for humans needs to be found. Enter the space ship Elysium and its crew. Setting off to find a new planet we can inhabit, the crew is placed in cryogenic sleep waking in rotating shifts to make sure things run smoothly. Along for the ride and asleep are some 60,000 passengers.
Waking for their shift is Bower (Ben Foster), reeling from temporary loss of memory and shakes, a part of the waking process. Bower dresses and then wakes his supervisor Payton (Dennis Quaid). Unable to access the ship’s bridge, Bower climbs up and begins crawling through the ventilation ducts while Payton gives him guidance via the ship’s computers.
While Bower travels the shaft, Payton talks to him about pandorum, a psychological condition brought about by long term cryogenic hibernation and space travel. Symptoms include paranoia, hallucinations, shakes and homicidal tendencies. Now along with the natural dangers onboard, the duo have to hope they don’t fall victim to this condition.
A fall down a shaft lands Bower in another portion of the ship. Here he is able to access a different tunnel and moving through it he encounters another human being awake. But Nadia (Antje Traue) doesn’t appear to be normal. Dirty and disheveled, she seems to be living at wits end, avoiding something yet unseen but not for long. More of a warrior woman than crew member, Nadia resists helping Bower at first, then begins educating him to how things have changed. The first change is a group of blue skinned mutants tracking down the pair in an attempt to capture them.
Communication between Bower and Payton has been shot when Bower landed on his com link. On his own, Bower enlists Nadia’s help and another person he comes across in an attempt to get to the ships main reactor. The cycle of the reactor calls for it to shut down every so often and in so doing prevent the ship from full power capacity. Along the way Bower and his group are hunted by the blue creatures that we discover are a cannibalistic bunch who view them as the blue plate special.
In the meantime, Payton finds another crew member as well, arriving in the area we began in and in bad shape. Gallo (Cam Gigandet) seems to be in shock. Or is it the first stages of pandorum? Only time will tell and a verbal cat and mouse game between Gallo and Payton begins.
The action in the film jumps back and forth between the two stories, Bower in a more adventurous mode that becomes more physical as he tries to reach the reactor while being hunted. The other tale is of Payton and Gallo as each one attempts to outmaneuver the other in their verbal sparring. While Bower’s path seems the most dangerous, the one followed by Payton revealed near the film’s end is much more dangerous.
The film results in a nice twist that I for one didn’t see coming. And its one of those twists where to give it away would ruin it for the first time viewer. Suffice to say that if you stick through till the end, you won’t be disappointed.
So is the film the best sci fi movie out there? Not quite. For all of its gritty, metal clad look, the type of spaceship we’ve seen in numerous films since the release of ALIEN, the movie feels like its bouncing back and forth over too much terrain. Sure the stories keep your interests, but at the same time talk comes at the expense of action and action at the expense of talk. They often seem in the wrong place.
Quaid and Foster turn in equally impressive performances. Both have their own reasons to go on living and to see that the mission is accomplished. But they’re nowhere near the same reasons.
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