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Sadly Over-hyped

A lot of fun.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Getting lost in space frozen for 15 years, that's unlikely. Falling into a star... improbable. Falling into it the day it goes supernova and explodes... ludicrous. Getting rescued by a ship just then... priceless.No, it's not Zaphod Beeblebrox's Heart of Gold to the rescue. It's also not the Parent of the Year awardees. After sentencing her daughter to two years' solitary confinement on an abandoned spaceship, the mother encourages her to get drunk and wander off alone with the strange man they've picked up. This foreshadows their prowess in hand to hand combat, which makes up most of the film's action. Combat highlights include for example the psycho talking close up face to face with one woman while blindly pointing the gun behind him at the other about six inches away, who obligingly simpers in the line of fire.In the end, the family of three abandons the metropolis-sized ship they were planning to use to observe the supernova until the last instant because it is too slow to escape the blast wave, instead using the psycho's fighter ship which they've refueled in one minute with 1600 pounds of gas propellant from a 0.7-kiloton missile. You have to love those hard sci-fi statistics! As long as Hollywood treats writing as an irrelevant frill, they'll continue making movies not fit to run at 3 am on the Sci fi channel.

Another of my delves into the bargain bin, this film actually does have some genuine points of merit. The special effects are actually quite well done, and by and large the acting is quite good.In brief, a scientist lady and her bloke along with her 18 (ho ho) year old daughter rattle around in an over-sized spaceship playing galactic "chicken" with stars which are about to explode, supposedly collecting scientific data. Escaped loony psycho turns up, gets himself invited on board and takes over ship. Scientist lady (who used to be a cop) turns into Rambo and duffs up loony psycho, rescuing daughter and bloke at the same time.I found it difficult to believe that the "18" year old girl was actually 18 (I think that the actress who played her was in fact 23 at the time) - even when the psycho loony turned up he commented on how she looked older than 18. I also had difficulty with the whole business of them hanging around stars until the last moment before beating a hasty retreat - would any parent want to take their teen-aged daughter on such a dangerous mission?The psycho loony seemed to be indestructible, resisting numerous attempts to rub him out. Sadly, he didn't exactly exude an air of menace (such as you would have got from, say, Oliver Reed or Anthony Hopkins); instead he came across as an annoying little tick who just happened to have a gun, and certainly did nothing to deserve his indestructible status. In all, I quite enjoyed the film but wouldn't go mad on it - it has succeeded in avoiding my "for the car boot sale" pile for a couple of years now, so it can't be that bad.

On a distant planet a psychopath is saved from execution by a space monk. He releases a few fellow inmates and breaks out of the prison in a spaceship. They dock onto a ludicrously enormous spacecraft that is orbiting a supernova star. This massive craft is populated by only three people, presumably because the budget of the film did not extend to hiring many actors. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the three goodies end up in a game of cat and mouse with the baddies.The psychopath in this movie is curious in that he is annoying. 'Annoying' is generally not a term one would use to describe a lunatic - unhinged, frightening, dangerous maybe but not 'annoying' but he is. The three people manning the giant ship are seriously unconvincing as warranting such important roles - this ship is practically the size of a city! Considering that the film is set approximately 50 years in the future, it is somewhat optimistic that such a huge man-made craft could exist, never mind the fact that it is used for such a relatively mundane task. Despite the vast size of the spaceship, the crew all have appallingly kitted out, tiny rooms and the dining room consists of what appears to be a plastic table and chairs. But there are a lot of corridors.The film is fairly well acted and it works as an averagey sci-fi thriller. But nothing great.

This film is like a Deep Calm in space.A family of research scientists find themselves trapped and terrorized by an escaped convict who they are trying to help. Good performances throughout, especially by Peter Outerbridge playing Nash, the escaped convict. Worth checking out.