Two stars. Rated R, for violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.24.17
Director Daniel Espinosa opens his
sci-fi chiller with an absolutely stunning sequence: a vertigo-inducing montage
that tracks through the narrow, weightless chambers of an orbiting International
Space Station, showing each of its six astronaut crewmembers at work.
The verisimilitude is uncanny,
with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey heightening the cramped, claustrophobic
environment while tilting this way and that, his camera completing full
360-degree turns as the crew members drift and pull themselves, weightlessly,
through every wholly realistic detail of production designer Nigel Phelps’
meticulously constructed corridors and modules.
This is golly-gee-whiz filmmaking
at its finest: a prologue clearly intended to one-up Alfonso Cuarón’s equally
mesmerizing opening sequence in 2013’s Gravity.
This one runs at least five spellbinding minutes, and it’s all — even more
amazingly — a single shot, with no cutaways. (Or let’s put it this way: If
camera trickery somehow feigned the single shot, the effect is seamless.)
This spectacular preface
complete, the action ceases briefly in order to present the film’s title — L – I – F – E — in a somber, sinister
font.
At which point, you should get up
and leave, because things go downhill from there.
Quite rapidly.
Scripters Rhett Reese and Paul
Wernick have delivered another textbook example of the so-called “idiot plot,”
which lurches from one crisis to the next solely because each and every
character behaves like a complete idiot at all times. Our real-world ISS
astronauts should sue for character assassination.
Although at its core a shameless
rip-off of Alien — with superior,
up-to-the-nanosecond special effects — there’s a major difference between this
film and that 1979 classic. Sigourney Weaver and her comrades weren’t
blithering idiots, and — important distinction — the biologically fascinating
critter they faced may have been powerful and dangerous, but it was mortal.
The whatzit foolishly unleashed
in Life has the unstoppable fantasy omnipotence
of Jason Voorhees or Freddie Krueger. Much worse, these supposedly intelligent,
vigorously trained scientist-astronauts are just as foolish, foolhardy and
emotionally immature as the slasher fodder in those doomed teenager flicks.
It’s therefore impossible to root
for them, or care about them, because Espinosa and his writers treat them like
disposable meat-bags. And, given the extraordinary production detail against
which this imbecilic story is told, that’s a crushing disappointment.
The story, set in the not too
distant future, begins as the ISS crew retrieves a Mars probe that has left the
Red Planet’s surface in order to bring soil samples for analysis. The goal is
to find some proof of life, no matter how insignificant.
The mood on board is ebullient
and hopeful. This chance for intimate study excites Russian cosmonaut Ekaterina
Golovkina (Olga Dihovichnaya), who heads the team; mission specialist and
spacewalk junkie Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds); mission doctor David Jordan (Jake
Gyllenhaal), who has spent 473 days on the station, and regards it as home;
Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), a microbiologist on loan from the Centers for
Disease Control; paraplegic British scientist Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare); and
flight engineer Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada).
Hugh conducts the initial tests
within the confines of the (not so) hermetically sealed lab, while the others
watch through bulwarked doorway windows. He finds a single-celled whatzit
which, although apparently dead, proves to have been hibernating, after
flickering into motion as environmental parameters are adjusted.
The discovery is named Calvin,
apparently to give everybody something cute to say while discussing it.
Calvin grows. Slowly, at first.
But it becomes large enough, initially plant-like, to explore with tiny “feeler
stalks.” Hugh allows it to caress one gloved finger.
At which point, Constant
Companion and I exchanged raised eyebrows. “Oh dear,” I whispered. “It’s going
to be one of those stories.”
A few days pass, before Calvin is
large enough to cause trouble; when the shift occurs, the result is
breathtakingly swift. Intelligent protocol at such a moment — Miranda later
blathers on, at length, about such “firewall” safeguards, all of which are
ignored — should have been swift and severe: jettison the lab compartment into
deep space, and blow it up.
But no. Rory, unable to bear
seeing his friend being attacked, opens
the hatch and charges into the lab, in a rescue attempt.
Sigh.
And we’re off to the races...
Since this “juvenile” Calvin has
the elastic, shape-shifting qualities of an octopus, it could have escaped the
lab via an air vent anyway — not that such a lab should have any air vents —
which would have been slightly more reasonable. Regardless, once loose in the
station, it demonstrates a healthy appetite for human blood and viscera (we
assume; that isn’t made entirely clear). It also proves quite ambulatory even
when left “outdoors” at one point, roaming the ISS exterior until it finds
another handy point of entry.
It’s adaptable, ferociously
intelligent and apparently indestructible. Our human characters, in great
contrast, are rigidly unimaginative, laughably stupid and insufferably easy
pickings.
As if that weren’t irritating
enough, Reese and Wernick further overstuff this turkey with “crisis overload.”
Makeshift weapons go off in the wrong direction, destroying essential
equipment. Space debris damages the station in the worst possible way, at the
worst possible moment. (In fairness, Gravity
also suffered from such calamity contrivance.)
Apparently believing that we
viewers need further goosing — as if Calvin’s gory carnage isn’t sufficiently
stimulating — Espinosa needlessly amplifies each fresh catastrophe with the
thunderously overwrought chords of Jon Ekstrand’s insufferably loud synth
score.
Most of the cast members do their
best with often inane dialog. Bakare imbues Hugh with dignity, and his useless
legs are an intriguing touch. Sanada earns sympathy when Sho shares pictures of
his just-born daughter, back on Earth. Rory is a typical wisecracking Reynolds
character: cocky, impulsive and loathe to follow orders.
Both women, however, leave something
to be desired. Dihovichnaya isn’t the slightest bit credible as a mission
commander; all of her line readings lack conviction. Ferguson slides perilously
close to “helpless girl” mode, whining from the sidelines and needing to be
prodded into useful action.
Which brings us to Gyllenhaal,
whose David wanders throughout as if in a marijuana haze. Such behavior
supposedly is explained by his excessive time in space, but that hardly
justifies his glazed expressions and fortune-cookie dialog. Worst of all, we have
to listen as he reads the entirety of Goodnight,
Moon during a particularly inopportune moment, while putting faux melodramatic
irony into every line.
I’ll give Reese and Wernick mild
credit for the clever — if nasty — switcheroo with which they conclude their
story. But that doesn’t make up for the preceding 103 minutes of lowest-common-denominator,
monster flick nonsense. All stupid movies are unsatisfying, but I’ve a
particular loathing for stupid sci-fi movies.
That
said, Life does serve a purpose: One
hopes, despite its inane excess, that this narrative reinforces the vital
importance of precautionary controls, should we ever really come across unknown life Out There.
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