The latest scifi/horror-ish film opens this weekend.

 

Aside from watchin' the trailer on YouTube, and seein' Dennis Quaid & Ben Foster's names on the poster (a poster that I still couldn't figure out what it was  supposed to be even after seein' the movie!), I knew nothin' about this.

 

My buddy Kevin came along, too, since the movie pass I had was good for two folks, me & one other.  While we were waitin' in line, he asked me what I knew  about it, so I told him what I figured from the trailer, and that it had Quaid & Foster.  He said, "I don't live that far, so, see ya!"

 

But, I got him to stay, and into the theater we went when the line started movin'.

 

One trailer for LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, the next Gerard Butler movie, which will also have Jaime Foxx and Colm Meaney.  As a Niner, I say, see it for the Chief!

 

PANDORUM (as explained in the movie, pandorum is the term for problems that can set in after extended time in stasis) starts with text on a screen, startin'  with 1969 and mankind landin' on the moon.  Two other highlights are noted before the text says that in 2157, the Elysium is launched, en route to a new Earth-like planet, because the resources on Earth are just too scarce to support the population.  A message from Earth is sent to the crew of the Elysium - we're finished, you're it, good luck and Godspeed.

 

Next thing we see, Ben Foster's Bower wakes up in a stasis tube, in a panic and unable to remember his life before his eyes opened in the tube.

 

After cleanin' himself up, he wakes Payton, his senior officer played by Dennis Quaid.  The two of them remember their trainin', and part of why they are  where they are, but not much in the way of details about who they really are supposed to be.  They are two of the three men from the fifth flight crew, but the fourth crew is nowhere around.  Unable to get out of the room they woke up in, Foster decides he has to venture out, through the ductwork, and open the door from the outside.  Quaid remains in the room, usin' a wind-up computer console to guide Foster.

 

Once out on his own, Foster finds that he and his senior officer aren't the only ones on the ship.  There are a few humans runnin' around, and a bunch of creatures that may or may not be aliens, that have traps, bait, and eat just about any human they get their hands on.

As Foster tries to reach the main power core of the ship, to do a CTRL+ALT+DEL on the engine, Quaid finds a member of the fourth flight crew cowering in the duct work, and a battle of wills occurs between the two men.

 

There is a twist, but the movie also has a pay-off in the end.  Kevin said on the way out that he had hoped for a different endin', and then told me.  I told him that has been done already.  At least this, in my opinion, was bit of a satisfactory way to conclude the story.

 

There really isn't that much to say about the movie...I like Dennis Quaid in just about everything I've seen him in, and he's pretty cool here.  Not as cool as the John Wayne impersonation he did in G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, but still, cool.  I really liked Ben Foster in 3:10 TO YUMA a couple of years ago, and that, to me, is still his best performance.  No one else in the human cast of characters was really that recognizable.  There's the warrior woman, the non-English speakin' warrior male, the black guy that knows the real history, and a couple of other flight crew members found durin' Foster's part of the mission.

 

The movie has a lot of atmosphere.  It's plenty dark, with the only light sources bein' glow sticks or flashlights used by Foster, or the computer console Quaid sits at for most of the film.  Or, as Kevin put it, PANDORUM was tryin' really hard to be ALIEN.  But, the fights are poorly staged, there are very few clear looks at the creatures runnin' amok through the ship, and it seemed to me that whenever they showed up, the film stock got changed, the picture was grainer or something...not nearly as clear as the parts of the film without 'em.  I did like that the creatures arrival was preceded by blue lights, though.  Foster used green and white, and Quaid had red and yellow, for the most part.  So, it was a very color-coded film.

 

There aren't a whole lot of big scifi effects, either.  When Foster shaves off his beard, its with a tool that looks like a Gillette, but with a laser light cuttin' the hair instead of metal.  There's a "ray gauntlet" weapon.  And Quaid's computer console may have been holograms or clear glass screens...not sure which.  And pretty much any technology used required the user to turn a crank or work a pump to get it powered up, since main power was offline.  I thought that was a nice touch, but seems to me they forgot about Quaid turnin' the crank on the computer console after the second timd he had to do it.

 

In the trailer, there was a reference to the folks from the RESIDENT EVIL series, and there was obviously a video game element to the movie.  Go here, open this door, see what happens.  Go there, meet this character, can they help or hurt?  Eat this, get protien.

 

At the end of the night, the most positive thing either of us could say was, "Hey, at least it was free."  Well, I said that, Kevin just agreed with me.