ADMR – I.S.S. very nearly crashes and burns – 3/5

I.S.S. tries to pack suspense into very small real estate

As I’ve said ad nauseum, The Average Dude is adept at finding the good in every movie I shell out my hard-earned coin for. To date, I’ve only found one movie that I literally could not do that with (I’m looking at you, ‘Us’). And even though we are in the sloppy-cold stretch for cinema, I’m glad to say that I did find that silver lining in the slightly above ‘meh’ movie that is I.S.S. Slightly above.

I.S.S. is the story of the folks that live above the clouds on the International Space Station (hence the name). A motley mix of American and Russian scientists cohabitate, coordinate and cooperate, having found a zen-like existence above the clouds. New arrival Dr. Kira Foster barely has time to tuck her lab mice into their new weightless home when she sees silent, terrifying, catastrophic lights expanding across the surface of Mother Earth. It seems that WWIII has errupted and no one thought to warn the I.S.S. crew first. Bureaucratic short-sightedness knows no borders, clearly.

So Much for Zen

And, as one might expect (and the trailer announced), those bureaucratic masterminds that brought you nuclear summer quickly followed by nuclear winter have indeed finally remembered the I.S.S. and have sent orders to ‘Secure the station. At any cost’. Brilliant.

Houston, we have a problem…

So, each team has orders to shove their moral compass in a drawer and become combatants. Their internal and group deliberations were disturbingly brief, which doesn’t speak highly of either Russian or American tethering to humanity. Moral ambiguity aside, they’re all scientists. Even if some of them are military scientists, they’re still presumably not hard-wired to kill. I’m thinking  the battle might look something like…

https://images.app.goo.gl/J7x8pYujhknGNwxB8
https://images.app.goo.gl/5q1h4DXrcy4EUUnX9

It’s all about the science, man

I.S.S. does it’s best to build tensions and highlight internal conflicts in a semi-slow burn, but it doesn’t quite make it. The most I felt was a slight anxiety and no real investment in any of the astro/cosmo-naughts. I actually found myself wishing to know more about what was going on planetside. We never got any kind of confirmation on who was winning down there or who was left. The visuals from the I.S.S. were visceral, basically showing an earth aflame. That seemed like the real story of intest here, not a potential slap-fight from the Big Bang Theory cast.

Also, it was never even clear why both governments wanted control of the I.S.S. in the first place…some vague reference to radioactive research in zero gravity. It seemed pretty obvious that they had weightier concerns on the ground but whatevs.

I.S.S. had a pretty short run-time – a mere 1h 35m – which still seemed a little long for this story to be told. Christopher Nolan, the king of the slow burn, could have found a way to properly build the tension. But this version of the story mostly failed to launch, and The Average Dude can only give I.S.S. a 3 out of 5 and I  truly wonder if this might have worked better as a dark comedy. The best thing about this movie was the stunning visuals of Global Thermonuclear War as viewed from the silent vaccuum of space. Given the current state of actual geopolitical unrest, these were even more gut-wrenching. Brrrr.

Elizabeth…this is the big one…

And btw, I had hoped that we would have a space station that looked more like Star Trek and less like Sanford and Sons. But that’s just me.

Check out all the Average Dude Movie Reviews and our super cool merch at www.barredlands.com

Like and Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter/X

#barredlandsdotcom #AverageDudeMovieReviews #PCLoadletter64 #ISS #AtAnyCost