Despite its well deserved pedigree for large scale action, Science Fiction is equally fertile ground for intimate human stories. Few Sci-Fi films display as excellent a premise with as much restraint as Duncan Jones' directorial debut, Moon. The Premise: Due to dwindling resources on planet Earth, certain companies have set up resource mining facilities on the Moon. A one man harvester team on one of such facilities, Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is a unwitting victim of his employers, who promise that he will return to earth soon, as per his contract. As he starts to age at a rapid rate and experience hallucinations, it becomes evident that Sam Bell is a clone whose three year contract concludes with his demise and replacement with another identical clone. The most effective part of this premise is how it takes a big concept (exploited workers by cold corporate entities) and explores it through a very human perspective. Upon reflection, I realized the similarities this premise has to The Island (i.e. "Plot twist: the main character is a clone!") but I grant Moon more credit for grounding and justifying the character conflict that arises from the twist, and having a worthwhile payoff.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
