Destino: Titán

Slingshot is primarily a psychological drama, which happens to be set in a Science Fiction universe. But anyone going to this movie hoping for a space actioner or some space opera will leave very disappointed.

In a twisty turny narrative that could have been shortened by 15 or 20 minutes without losing any impact, the three lead actors give outstanding performances, but there is a lot of repetition, and the middle third of the film really drags.

At the same time, it certainly keeps you thinking, and the ending is extremely gripping and tense.

This is not a film at the same level as Space Odyssey, Or Solaris. But if you have a brain and you want to be provoked into thinking about the nature of love and humanity faced by existential crises this is not a bad movie at all.

The script lacks in the science and engineering department, and the characters seem incompetent.

Within the first 20 minutes, we already know the main protagonist is an unreliable narrator who exudes whatever the opposite of confidence and leadership is. His crewmate is similarly unreliable, talking behind the captains back. The captain calls the spaceship an 'aircraft' and handwave-explains 'fatigue and buckling' despite there being no explanation for what would cause cyclic stresses on the structure. We also got in the first 30 minutes that their mission is to reach Titan's methane, to make fuel, to somehow solve climate change. It all just sounds like mumbo-jumbo written by an arts student.

You need something like Andy Weir's 'The Martian' or the upcoming Project Hail Mary adaption; i.e. The best-of-the-best astronauts being actually believable world-class highly trained and skilled experts and problem-solvers. The physics doesn't have to be 100% in a sci-fi (Interstellar worked pretty well throughout bar that one line about love transcending space and time), but for any deviations the characters have to 100% support the narrative for it to be believed by the audience. These astronauts are immediately whispering to each other about mutiny from the start... and keep forgetting that there's audiovideo recording in each room allowing the captain to hear the sceme. I can't believe that these characters are actually astronauts.

Please please please stop with this artificially induced drama hinging on main characters being incompetent, keeping secrets from each other, or scheming against each other for no good reaon. Stop with the secrets which the 3rd party witnesses... It's like where movies have 2 people talk or kiss, for the 3rd jealous person to spot it or to get the wrong impression. It's a frustrating cliche. If the drama would be resolved by one character speaking one sentence to another character, it's weak writing.

With Insterstellar, I felt awe that made my arm hairs stand on end. With Slingshot I just feel frustrated and claustrophobic. Slingshot is weak writing.

This has to be like the fourth or fifth movie featuring astronauts on a distant mission, but being about the psychological state of the lead character, in the last few years. This things are usually giving themselves away immediately: artificial gravity, LED light everywhere, big screens, big spaces, lectures for children about the Solar System given to trained astronauts, things unravelling or not making sense, but always, always someone obsessively thinking about people in their past: lovers, children, parents. Because it makes perfect sense for a person to go through years of rigorous training to perform a specific mission and then, when they get the job, out of a lot of hard working and highly motivated candidates, they spend it regretting things and thinking about the past. And they were the best candidate out of them all!

What's the point?! Who watched these and then said "yes, that's exactly what I needed! A psychological drama, but set in space, although nothing spacy really happens!"? Science fiction folk don't care about the drama of it, they want the action and the science and the gadgets and maybe to feel that there is more to life than just the daily whining of people. And drama people want some sort of highly emotional story involving multiple people, but somehow resembling their life, not some person in a small space having a fit. What a completely useless film!

So, yeah, let's call this small-space-fiction. And the writer is Nathan Parker, of Moon fame! He did one good film about a guy alone on a space station 15 years ago and thought to remake it, but without a story?

Bottom line: the story is so flimsy that I can't talk about it without spoiling it. All I can say is that this is not science fiction, because there is no science, and one can hardly call it fiction, because it doesn't have the coherence of fiction. It's like a nightmare that makes no sense and you barely remember when you wake up from it. The only positive thing is that it was decently acted.

Mindgames and science fiction have traditionally gone together well. This one played a lot of mind games and it was done on a lower budget, I expect.

Pure psychological science-fiction with several twists at the end. It was one of those films that you really didn't know where it was going until it got there. I liked how it flipped back and forth between the past and the current deep space expedition. It helped put things in context.

Affleck and Fishbourne played their roles to the tee. At a certain point it felt redundant but I guess it was not unexpected given the outcome.

In a year or so it will probably get relegated to endless repeats on one of the streaming film channels.

The best part of this movie is the ending, which will deceive the viewer several times. Laurence Fishburne played his role, as always, perfectly. Casey Affleck did well, but I was never impressed by his performance, although this is just my personal subjective judgment. Yes, it's not easy to watch this movie to the end, and this is its main disadvantage, it was especially hard for me to watch Affleck's caramel flashbacks, but I still watched this movie - the film turned out to be quite good. Given the complexity of the plot and ambiguous characters, it is impossible not to mention the merits of the director. Visual style, musical accompaniment - all this works to create a unique closed atmosphere. The film may not become a cult classic, but it definitely deserves the attention of those who like thoughtful and ambiguous stories.