I.S.S. is the best movie about the International Space Station of 2024. And the only one. So far. Obviously.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy much of it. Many didn't, tho. It has only a 43% audiencer"fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes (As usual, 63% of critics were more forgiving and gave it a "fresh" rating) Gravity (2012) is a tighter adventure story, big namestars, and a better script.
This film is directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, whose documentary film Blackfish exposed and embarrassed Sea World's treatment of whales in captivity, got a 99% fresh rating by critics on the famous "Rotten" site. Clearly, she does better with documentaries.
The film starts with a few on-screen paragraphs and establishing shots of the station itself, floating on the edge of space for over 20 years, inhabited in this film by American astronauts and Russian Cosmonauts. It's frequently had some from other nations as well, and it might have been better to have add a mix of Canadians, Germans and Japanese, as in real life. But maybe not. It would complicate what follows.
The action opens with two new astronauts arriving at the station, joining three Russians and one American already on board.
This, too is routine in real life.
The new arrivals are greeted warmly by them, and the new astronaut (an American woman, one of two women and three Americans of a six-person crew) is shown the ropes of living on the station. Again, it looks and sounds authentic, based on video we've seen of the real thing.
The backgrounds the crew are maybe too fleshed out by the movie's half point, but despite some weak writing, the FX are really good for an allegedly low-budget film. Anyone who has seen pictures of the views from the actual ISS will recognize this accuracy, instantly. Weightlessness and the cramped quarters are also portrayed well throughout the film.
Soon, despite assurances from veterans of the ISS that politics don't intrude on the station, ostensibly devoted to science, both sides get messages that hostilities have broken out on Earth (verified by an American seeing what at first look like "volcanoes" out a station window. An American doing a spacewalk tells colleagues not to look out the windows on the ẁar- ravaged planet below.
Both sides are told in internet texts by their two governments to "Take control of the station. By any means necessary." Shortly afterwards, communication is lost with earth, and power flickers.
The rest of the film is predictable, as a mini war erupts in space on the station. First with acts of sabotage, then murder, occurring. To the director's credit, it's not clear which, if any, of the six crew will survive, especially as the station begins to fall out of space - something all space agencies are planning to let happen in the next decade anyway, since it is cramped and outdated.
In the meantime, it requires periodic adjustments to keep it orbiting, 250 miles above the earth. For a while, it's uncertain if it will get one. Why it's important to "take control" of it, and what use it would have, remains unclear. A subplot of a crewman doing important, relevant research for a post-WWIII earth is a rare unbelievable note.
It is good to know much of this science background before going to the theater, since I bet most Americans forgot we had a station and that we mostly share it with Russia.
The film ends showing which of the crew survive, but not going into "what's next" for the future of the crew, the ISS, or the earth itself, but following a clear nuclear exchange and bloodshed on the station itself, the future looks dim, indeed.
All the crew dying or the station's destruction would have been a poignant ending. But it ends ambiguously.
Rated R for violence and some language. See it in the theater soon. It will likely go to streaming quickly.
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