SYNOPSIS:
Two crewmen awaken from hyper-sleep aboard a spacecraft. None of their equipment is working, and their memories are incomplete. What was their mission? How much time has passed? Where are they? Who are they? As they try to piece things together, they discover they are not alone, and the ship's new inhabitants - tribal warriors carrying crudely made weapons - are moving among them, intent on killing all aboard. As the space travelers unravel the frightening and deadly secrets the ship harbors, they realize the survival of mankind hinges on their actions. They must regain control of the ship before PANDORUM takes over.
Pandorum starts out with a few good ideas. In its brightest moments, it gives us a tiny glimpse into the future, one where mankind is forced to take an extended trip across the stars for its very survival, in a beast of a machine as ominous as it is hopeful. But those glimpses are far and few in between, as the movie spreads its ideas thin over a completely unreasonable runtime. Pandorum wears out its welcome pretty quickly.
The movie takes place on the Elysium, a space faring vehicle carrying thousands of colonists from Earth, hoping to reach the only other habitable planet known to man. Corporal Bower (Ben Foster) awakens from suspended animation to find the ship powered down and missing its crew. An hour later, Lieutenant Payton (Dennis Quaid) emerges from stasis as well. Both are suffering some acute memory loss due to the effects of their extended sleep. The two are resolved to figure out what went wrong, Bower heading deep into the bowels of the ship to reset the damaged reactor. He quickly finds that he and Payton are not quite alone, and the truth behind their predicament is far more sinister than they could have ever imagined.
Pandorum begins pretty strongly, but quickly loses steam as it stretches its simple premise to ridiculous proportions. The movie’s runtime of one hour and fifty minutes is excessive to say the least. The story has a couple of twists to it that aren’t very difficult to figure out, but the movie spends a lot of time dropping little hints anyway, inching towards an answer that most audiences will probably see from a mile away. And when you consider that much of the film’s plot is cribbed wholesale from several other superior science fiction movies, the lengthy runtime is just inexcusable.
One of the things the movie does have going for it is its setting. The ship that the movie takes place in is a marvelous piece of production design, teeming with pipes and tubes and tight spaces that don’t all make sense, but add some visual flair anyway. Unfortunately, we don’t get see a lot of it between the movie’s general darkness, the shaky camerawork, and the seriously attention deficient editing. The movie has some horror aspirations, but most of the film’s scares come from jumpy editing and the ridiculously overbearing sound design rather than creating atmosphere.
Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid are mostly too good for the film’s material. The movie’s main premise allows them to stretch a little bit, but the story keeps their characters frustratingly flat, leaving the two with barely anything to do but snarl. Cam Gigandet provides a few enjoyable moments, but the rest of the supporting cast really falls short. Antje Traue speaks in a pretty annoying accent in what appears to be an attempt to hide her inability to express emotion. Eddie Rouse hams it up to disappointing effect.
Pandorum could really have been something. The movie starts out promisingly enough, and the two strong leads give the film a lot of promise. But that promise is spread out over too much movie, the story and its revelations spread thin over sequence after sequence of dimly-lit, poorly shot chases featuring a mostly uninteresting foe. This kind of all-hell-has-broken-loose-in-a-confined-setting has been done better by other films as well, particularly Neil Marshall’s amazingly taut The Descent, and of course, Ridley Scott’s Alien. In the face of those films, Pandorum is loud, bloated and ugly.PANDORUM (2009)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet
Director: Christian Alvart
Studio: Overture Films
Genre: Sci-Fi / Action / Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: September 25, 2009
Official Site: http://www.pandorummovie.com
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