Moon 44

Moon 44 has a mining colony that contains ore that is extracted by ongoing machinery for a company who turns it into fuel. It is the last colony available to the company since robot-manned drones attack them by order through thieves who use them for their own financial purposes. An Internal Affairs agent (Michael  Paré) is sent to the colony to investigate why mining shuttles were going missing (he doesn’t know that the company sending him understand he’ll possibly not be able to leave, and that the prisoners he will be transporting with (he’ll be undercover as a prisoner) are to fight the robot-manned drones attacking the moon without a way off!) The company chairman obviously won’t tell him this, pretending that once the mission is accomplished (finding out if the person in his file can give him information on who has commandeered those shuttles) he’ll be free from employ at the IA division…just not off the planet! That’s the rub: this agent will be stuck on the moon, even in an investigation his chance of survival is grim (the company just want the answers he investigates, not in the mind of his personal safety while doing so).
***½

I think what might be used as a criticism against Moon 44 is that the gist of the plot concerns missing mining shuttles, beefy, smart-ass convicts getting out of prison to fly futuristic helicopters with the assistance of small, bright young men at the guidance systems leading them, and the oncoming attack of the Pyrite robots, with sabotage in the ranks on the moon (Malcolm McDowell (no surprise) and Leon Rippy (who I thought was really good here) are Major and Master Sergeant, in command and secretly behind the mining shuttles becoming available to the Pyrite pirates). I have noticed this film isn’t highly regarded or that particularly distinguished. This is my first viewing of it, but I do remember my uncle telling me he found it not that memorable or noteworthy. I personally enjoyed it. Yes, this has that Roland Emmerich “go for the epic grandeur” Hollywood approach to it, but I dug the enormous sets and special effects. This is a technical achievement with all the cool models, appropriately lit/darkened, with plenty of smoke and dirt (there’s a heavy emphasis on steam, metal, fluorescent lights, computer-controlled systems, with treachery and greed bedfellows for those with the power at their fingertips far away from the boardrooms and suits who send out men to these outer reaches of space so they don’t have to get their hands dirty) to establish the moon’s mining plot. Lots of widescreen compositions of these vast sets, with corridors, steel doors, consoles, control panels, and equipment to visualize a blue collar and high-tech merging to describe how tough men’s labor/sweat and intelligent minds/reasoning are needed to mine the minerals at a substantial pace/rate in order to reach a quota, as well as, prevent attack strikes from opposing forces and malicious competitors. While machines do a lot of the heavy lifting, bodies and brains are still in need in order to protect the company’s assets/profit margins.

But to tell you the truth, on paper, the plot just doesn’t reach out and grab you. Mining on the moon and the heated tensions between convicts and brainiacs doesn’t exactly read “MUST SEE SCI-FI”, but Emmerich tries, and to most, fails, to deliver the kind of pizzazz needed to sell the picture: he gives the plot a lot of flash and glitz with the backdrop and eye candy technology on display. It has never become a cult favorite and I’m not sure it has moved the needle much at all for sci-fi action fans. It has a hell of a cast, but even the unique group of faces failed to register much in the way of support for Moon 44. Emmerich would move on to direct big budget blockbusters (pissing me off royally with Godzilla, but leaving me with a bit of guilt in enjoying the ludicrous The Day After Tomorrow (my favorite of his being Universal Soldier), and I think the signs are here in Moon 44 that he has a style and sense of providing something big and bloated for hefty profit. Emmerich does kind of love his Pyrite ship…it is shown over and over approaching Moon 44, while he can’t help himself in showing the shot of ore being mined repeatedly.

 

The Pyrite ship goes on for miles and reminded me of Dark Helmet’s in Spaceballs. It carries a menace because there’s so much ship which indicates a lot of weaponry and manpower.

There’s an unpleasant subplot involving a nasty rapist scumbag named Scooter who has been tormenting a teenage kid, soon sodomizing him in the men’s showers with convicts leaving the area knowing what was about to happen without intervening. Later, the kid is behind the controls which dictate Scooter’s flight pattern, speed control, and evasive maneuvering, causing him to crash into a rock formation on the moon. It is a reminder that the fighter pilots need their control operators; there’s a trust and responsibility to work together. Scooter antagonizing the kid by mocking the male rape only encouraged his own demise. It is sickening and tragic. The kid hanging himself in his cell further cements the awfulness of how a rape can fundamentally ravage the victim’s psychologically. This whole subplot was a downer.

 

"Oh, shit."

 

Basically Rippy follows McDowell’s instructions, typing in the new coordinates for the shuttles, and yet headquarters doesn’t have a clue where they are being relocated to. It doesn’t take long for IA agent Pare to catch him in the act (okay, maybe it does reach the hour point before he does, but there is all of the convicts vs. braniacs plot to keep the viewer occupied (if you care less) until then). I liked Rippy more than McDowell here because you can see the tortured psyche on his face…McDowell is on autopilot which was a bit disappointing. To be honest, though, the part wasn’t all that colorful. He is stuck on a moon out in the middle of space mining for a company earning heavy green. He’s your garden variety “stick it to the man” sell-out that takes advantage of his distance from the company to secretly steal from them while aiding the enemy. Pare has charisma, I give him that. He is laconic and cool. You know the type of stoic hero he represents. Few words, and all business. He lets his actions do the talking. Rippy benefits from being the military commander with limited power, rejected to the moon because he couldn’t find a position loftier than training pilots to die against drone ships operated by robots. It is a part that provides Rippy with the ability to convey this pissed-off, grumpy, barking-orders antagonist who desperately longs to be anywhere but this moon mining base, using his limited control to make lives difficult. He shouts a lot, but there’s a great deal of anguish in the performance. McDowell is cold and lifeless…maybe that is needed for his part. I guess I have been spoiled by good old-fashioned McDowell villainy.

Moon 44 had never been on my radar until just recently. I happened across it while reading about sci-fi movies potentially reviewed for the blog because that’s where my interest currently lies. I loved Streets of Fire (no surprise considering I’m a Walter Hill guy) and really liked Eddie and the Cruisers, so the idea of a young Pare as a fighter pilot/undercover cop appealed to me. He is perfectly suitable to the role he’s cast. I had no problem with him. The Stephen Geoffreys cult will rejoice in that their spaced-out weirdo is a drug-dealing loser who happens to be the navigator for Brian Thompson (whose claim to fame is the women-killing cult psycho always spitting “PIG” to Sly Stallone in Cobra). Geoffreys has a boombox containing drugs and he spikes a con’s drink leading to the man’s near OD on it, pretty much rendering him braindead! He has a dialogue scene talking about how he was bullied and lonely until he started selling dope to the man he OD’d. He does get to play hero with Thompson when they must hold off the attack drones so that Pare can lead a shuttle with the crew on board to safety. Dean Devlin has a rather sizable part as Pare’s navigator, and he is the moral crusader arranging an uprising against the convicts after his buddy’s rape/murder-revenge/suicide. Devlin and Pare begin a friendship due to a mutual trust and belief in each other’s abilities. They depend on each other especially when rescue operations are in order at film’s end when the Pyrite ship sends attack squadrons to attack and take Moon 44. Lisa Eichorn rounds out the principle cast as the only female officer on the moon, standing up to both McDowell (when she discovers he is the one behind the missing shuttles, holding a device with their location) and especially Rippy (they are always at odds over his treatment of the officers), while the convicts like to whistle and heckle her. Pare will have to rescue her when McDowell eventually holds her at gun point. And, yes, a ticking bomb shows up in the film.

Oddly, the film ends with Pare confronting the boardroom and chairman over what McDowell was doing, where the missing shuttles are located, and how those they sent over to Moon 44 to be written off as collateral damage deserved better. It is all rather dramatically inert. Considering all the Battlestar Galactica action between Thompson/Pare against the drones prior to it (and the successful rescue mission that had them dropping in a payload on top of a robot-programmed machine that ships the mineral to the destination for fueling purposes.), you’d think Moon 44 would go out with one of those roaring patriotic scores celebrating a battle well fought (although, the film never quite lives up to what the training exercises seem to indicate: we never see the convicts in those souped-up copters engaging the drones). Instead, the boardroom gets exactly what they desire even though Moon 44 was taken. Kind of peters out when it should leave us pumped full of adrenaline.