Cheap Moon 44 (DVD) (Michael Paré, Lisa Eichhorn, Dean Devlin, Brian Thompson, Malcolm McDowell) (Roland Emmerich) Price

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Customer Reviews of Moon 44

Early effort from director of ID4, Stargate, and others...
I first saw this film in 1991, after exhausting the sci-fi section at my local Blockbuster. A straight-to-video release (as I recall) I thought it a decent outer-space adventure. Grim, gritty, raw, it tries to be a combination of several genres: space opera, hardboiled detective novel, war movie. It succeeds at none of these, but taken as a whole is enjoyable weekend popcorn fare. Pare does a good job as our disaffected intellectual tough-guy hero, while other B and C list names show up for decent turns. Leon Rippy especially is fun as the failed, proud, bull-dogged Sergeant Sykes, while Malcom McDowell appears as the military commander whom you just know in your heart is up to no good, right from the start. Because, hey, it's Malcolm McDowell! Roscoe Lee Browne is also worth mentioning as the slick, coniving corporate boss. The special effects are of the limited-budget variety, and it's a shame Emmerich didn't have access to either CGI, or more money, as he has in later, better-known movies. But I think this movie is worth watching, and even owning, if you want to see solid early work from a director who has since tackled some of the highest-profile and biggest profit-reaping films in the industry.

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In the Outer Zone... you need a friend.
Oh man, where do I start? Most reviews of this movie seem to range from love to hate, with very few between. I think I fall in the 'between' area. Moon 44 was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independance day, The Patriot, and Godzilla. Oh yeah, he also produced and wrote Moon 44. One of the stars in the movie, Dean Devlin, also produced Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla with Emmerich.

The movie starts off by telling us it's the future, and all Earth's resources have been depleted, so companies have taken to space to exploit moons for their mineral resources. Competition for these moons is pretty fierce, as the material recovered from these moons is very valuable, and can make or break a company. One company has seen numerous moons hit, shuttles lost, and their profits gone, so when their last moon is threatened by what appears to a conspirator inside the company, the board of directors send an investigator to determine the truth, played by b-movie veteran Michael Paré.

He goes undercover, as a one of a group of prisoners who have flight experience as pilots are hard to come by. Apparently it's going to be these guys job to protect the moon and the robotic equipment from raiders by flying around in modified helicopters. Since the terrain they will be flying in is difficult, each pilot must work closely with a navigator, who is situated within the station, giving specific directions to the pilot. One wrong move could mean death. The navigators are the typical computer nerdy bunch, and don't mix well with the harden prisoners when they show up. One prisoner decides to rape his navigator in the shower, and though we don't get to see it, I thought it was a pretty bad idea of the prisoner to do such a thing since the navigator would surely want revenge of some sort.

So we have the problems between the navigators, the hard nosed drill instructor busting the prisoner/pilots chops (especially Felix Stone, played by Michael Paré), and the slimy head of the station, Major Lee, played by Malcolm McDowell, another actor who spends an awful lot of time in b-movie hell. (Check out the IMdB and you'll see what I mean.) The whistleblower, a navigator called Tyler, played by Devlin, gives Stone what he has and together they determine that the mysterious disappearance of the shuttles is really not that they got lost, but were misdirected by someone inside the organization.

There's some running around, some scenes that were supposed to build tension, etc., and we start to find out the truth in what's going on, the motive behind the theft of the shuttle.

My biggest problem with this movie is that it seemed like too many threads of story line were dangled before us, much more than could be adequately resolved within the 98 minute running time of the movie. The major stuff was resolved, but the movie got bogged down in character development for characters that were not important to the main story. I mean really, who cares why the one navigator spiked some pilot's lunch with drugs? As a result, Malcolm McDowell and Michael Paré didn't get as many lines or as much screen time as they should have. The effects and sets are decent enough for this kind of movie, although they kept showing us scenes of a giant earthmoving device and I don't know why? To establish something, I guess...and why do all mining bases/station of operations have to be so funky looking in these movies? It's not that they're dirty, but just a lot of metal grated flooring, pipes and what not on the walls and ceiling, and extremely poor lighting. Maybe it's a written rule somewhere.

I think this could have been a better movie had it focused more on the main plot, and not presented all these secondary plots, spending a lot of time dealing with them, and basically going nowhere. And I was disappointed in the pan and scan full screen format. When will they learn? Why not put both formats on the disc, and let the viewer choose? And don't look for any extras, not even a trailer or case insert with chapter stops. Nada, nil, none...seeing as how this director went on to bigger (but not necessarily better) things, I would have thought he would have been interested in providing some insight to us about this movie through a commentary. Oh well...A so so movie with an exceptionally poor release.

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The DVD version of Moon 44 is a big let down
When I first heard that this title was coming out on DVD I was rather excited because I had only ever seen the film on VHS in a pan and scan format. I remember liking the movie and looked forward to the day when it would come out on DVD because I assumed it would be released in widescreen format. Much to my dismay the DVD version is another pan and scan transfer. Here was an opportunity to release the title with it's original Panavision, 2.35:1 aspect ratio but for some odd reason the distributors bypassed this option in favor of the old VHS pan and scan format. The movie is fun but far from a great film. But if a widescreen version was available I would definitely buy it. But a new DVD version in pan and scan seems like a waste of time to me. So I'll just pass on this one and hold on to my old VHS copy.