A spaceship seems like such a lonely place. Whether you’re alone or with dozens of people, it is isolated, with limited movement, limited activity and no means of escape. A long trip into deep space seems almost impossible from a psychological perspective. Knowing how far you are from those you care about, with an ever-slipping connection to your life. Only the work, the mission, to keep you from losing it. Only your memories to keep you company.
This is what the psychological sci-fi drama Slingshot is about. Three men on a difficult journey, grappling with their duty and their sanity. It has thriller elements, mixed with a meditation on love and loneliness that has echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 masterpiece Solaris in a way that is compelling for a while. The two main performances are both very good, however, the script, which isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, undermines them with one twist too many, leading to a conclusion that means less than it should.
Odyssey 1 is a manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan that involves an incredibly tricky slingshot maneuver around Jupiter and a whole lot of drug-induced sleep. The men on the trip are John, filled with longing for the woman he left behind, Nash, a scientist who worries about the status of the ship, and Captain Franks, whose chief concern is completing the mission. As odd things begin to take place, the three men wonder: Is there something wrong with Odyssey 1? Or are the drugs causing them to lose their minds?
I was interested in those answers for the first ¾. That is when Slingshot (101 minutes, without the end credits) goes away from quiet, internal tension, negating the tone it has built up in a frustrating way. It leans much harder into its more traditional adventure aspects at that point, culminating in a very poorly handled ending. The stuff about what it is like to be up there, farther from Earth than anyone in history, moving away from your reality and toward something unpredictable, sacrificing everything for this, is what I was intrigued by. What does that do to a man? The conflict between the astronauts, what they see, what they feel, makes for a fascinating sci-fi story. The more literal conflict that develops is a massive disappointment in comparison.
Casey Affleck is effective as John, the level-headed, practical-thinker at the story’s center. This trip is his dream, but every time he wakes up, things are unclear. Did he abandon the love of his life for a suicide mission? Was he fair to her? Did he make the right choice? Affleck is skilled at looking externally calm, while being freaked out internally. The wonder of this flight clashing with what is actually happening to him is definitely engaging.
Laurence Fishburne comes close to stealing his scenes as the captain. He is also amazed at what they are doing, yet there is some menace to him. How far will he go to protect the mission? Fishburne is so captivating here because we share John’s fuzzy view of events. It is hard to say if the captain’s devotion to stay on course is correct or madness.
This is exacerbated by the third crewmember, Tomer Capone’s Nash, who quickly decides it’s the latter. His performance is the weakest because there is no nuance to the character. The other major role goes to Emily Beecham as Zoe, who exists as a memory that haunts John. Her purpose is to make him regret leaving Earth, so there’s no depth to Zoe, though she is a useful narrative device.
There is a potentially great sci-fi story about the human condition in Slingshot. The tension of being so far from Earth, on a mission they may not come back from even if it is successful. How that impacts their daily life, commonly interrupted by lengthy “hibernation” that just serves to make them more disoriented, had me legitimately curious about where this was going. The final result feels like a missed opportunity.
3 out of 5
Cast:
Casey Affleck as John
Laurence Fishburne as Captain Franks
Tomer Capone as Nash
Emily Beecham as Zoe
Directed by Mikael Håfström
Written by R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker
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