'Incoming' asks the question "what would happen if you invited the worlds most ridiculously stupid doctor to the worlds most ridiculously stupid prison?"
The "premise" of the movie is that some time in the future several governments of earth band together to construct a prison in orbit around earth where they can utilize "enhanced interrogation" without all that pesky oversight. I would say that sounds ominous, except for the fact that this is revealed with all the sophistication of a mildly learning impaired twelve-year-old's book report. The station manager is showing the good doctor the infirmary, which consists of a clean room with single medical examination table and a couple of cabinets ("looks more like a torture chamber", the doctor sniffs) when she asks what the inmates know about each other. "They don't know anything about each other," he replies. "Is that even legal!" she screeches. "What about the Geneva Convention?"
Unfortunately, the station manager isn't too bright either, because instead of saying "what in god's name are you talking about?" he instead responds with the supremely stupid "there is no Geneva Convention up here." Needless to say, in less than five minutes she runs into a prisoners room to find out how the bad man hurt him and gets taken prisoner. Sadly, instead of just saying "well, this is why we have everyone sign waivers" and turning off the oxygen in that part of the ship like any sane person would do, the rest of the crew rush out to confront all of the now freed prisoners and soon find themselves pinned down in the wrong part of the ship.
So then everyone does some stuff. Plots are hatched, speeches are given, fists are flying, none of it particularly thrilling. In the end the good guys win, I guess. And we all learn a valuable lesson about something.
A couple of random funny tidbits. Early in the film the characters discuss how they are using "gravity modifiers" to explain why a film set in space doesn't have a single scene where anything is actually weightless. Too bad they never thought to explain why anyone would be insane enough to build a prison in a place where the cost of bringing people and supplies costs $20,000/kg. I mean come on, what exactly is the value add here? Privacy? You could get the same result with a ship floating in international waters for less than 1% of the cost!
What else? Well, I'm guessing the director really, really wanted to feel all "woke" about the humane treatment of prisoners, because three quarters of the way through the film the doctor is still giving speeches about the prisoners going public to "show the world how you've been treated." Prisoners who at this point have murdered several people and converted the spaceship into a WMD by setting it to crash into a population center.
And poor, poor station manager Kingsley. Not only did the doctor and her cohorts ignore literally every security measure he asked them to follow, but both they and the honchos on earth take every opportunity they can to complain about how all of these escaped prisoner issues are in fact his fault. Yah, that makes sense. Honestly, I don't feel like the doctor earned her "hero" role. She spends so much time scolding everyone for their actions but never confronts the reality that her actions *directly* led to the death of numerous people and the endangerment of millions of others.
All right, enough rambling. It's a bad movie.
