Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone, tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.
I watched this on release in the cinema and I truly loved it. 2 of my favourite actors, in my favourite genre of film, with a breathtakingly exciting story. We need more space stories to get people excited and inspired about a future civilisation of humans living off-earth. It has to come as there is no alternative. However, it was only while watching it again, on DVD a year later, that I recognised just how many holes there are in the plot. I still love the film, but I see too many plot holes these days.
The main problem is the physics. I don't expect everything to be rigidly correct because, it's just a story. But I do expect things to be in the realms of reality. Almost all of the physics throughout weren't even in the realms of likelihood so that spoiled it a little for me. People who love Sci Fi will know exactly what I mean but for those who don't, do you really think a senior astronaut would be clowning around in his jet suit like Wall-E as Clooney does at the beginning? All the satellites would have been fine in the tragedy: All space craft are at different orbits. There's not a chance in hell that Kowalski could have found Stone after she first got blown away from the station. You can't just move through space and change orbits on a whim: It takes complex calculations and multiple thrusts to achieve that, you can't do it with a jet pack and certainly not with a fire extinguisher! The continual banging into things is laughable. Their bodies would be instantly broken if that happened in real life. Stone was down to 1% oxygen, yet still Kowalski keeps engaging her in conversation about trivial things. And Kowalski was saved the instant Stone caught his tether: Making him let go and somehow float off (which he would not do) was just silly. That's enough for now. There's another dozen screaming mistakes but I'll let you watch the film and spot them.
What was possibly more irritating than the plot holes was the music score. At first I thought we were going to experience the true hush of space. That would be a remarkable and wonderful thing. Instead Kowalski is constantly jabbering about nothing and playing awful music. Perhaps the most irritating role Clooney has ever done. Also there was a musical score over the film. It was supposed to (I think) excite your emotions. What it did was just spoil the film. Why do you need the racket of a full blown orchestra when someone is in space? That for me was a schoolboy error and was probably the main factor that I didn't rate the film as highly as I otherwise would have done.
In the end I still enjoyed it on some level, but it could have been an enormous blockbuster like Titanic. But ultimately it was just a good Sci Fi film. I gave it a 7 but it could have had the only 9 I am ever likely to give had it not been for the thigs I mentioned.
