Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
MPAA Rating: R
Run Time: 107 Minutes
There’s a popular conspiracy theory that’s been floating around hypothesizing that it was none other than filmmaking legend Stanley Kubrick who orchestrated a fake moon landing using the same techniques he utilized when shooting his iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey. While the theory in and of itself is laughable, it’s still fun to think about our government walking up to Kubrick and being like, “Hey can you do us a favor?”
Unfortunately, what isn’t too much fun is Antoine Bardou-Jacquet’s cinematic take on this theory. Bardou-Jacquet’s Moonwalkers stars Rupert Grint as a sleazy manager of a rock band who, through a series of coincidences and unfortunate events, winds up working for a CIA operative (Ron Perlman) in order to film a fake moon landing just in case the real Apollo 11 mission doesn’t succeed. What follows is a drug-fueled action-comedy that seems to draw some heavy inspiration from Guy Ritchie, and while all the pieces may be there, none of them really fit into place.
Random bouts of slow motion, a few drug-trip scenes, spurts of intense violence and a thoroughly grating cast of characters make up this farcical tale that certainly tries to be entertaining, but never quite achieves more than being a mild annoyance.
Perlman manages to be the highlight of the film, doing what he does best, which is being a brutish badass who smashes a lot of faces and blows off the occasional head. Fans of Sons of Anarchy itching to see more Clay action may be able to look past Moonwalkers weak, often illogical script and enjoy the film simply for the Perlman factor, but for me, the sporadic violence often felt out of place and made the movie feel glaringly inconsistent, unaware of what kind of voice it wanted.
Perhaps in an effort to add some dimension to the character, Perlman’s character has frequent and random flashbacks to his time in Vietnam for some reason that, while visually effective, add little to nothing to the film or the character as a whole and did nothing more than add another ridiculous element into a film already chock full of silly junk that doesn’t land.
In addition to the shootouts and fight scenes, there’s a heavy amount of ’60s drug culture injected into the film, with many of the characters being drunk, stoned or high throughout the bulk of the runtime, which proves to be unfunny and entirely over the top. Most of the characters act like caricatures of ’60s stereotypes and, because the humor is just not there (with the small exception of one brillant limp-wristed handshake), they instead just manage to be unpleasant and annoying.
Moonwalkers manages to be mediocre and forgettable at best, providing few laughs and squandering an interesting concept for a film that just goes through the motions with a cast of characters who are inept and underdeveloped. If you’re interested in a fake moon landing story, you may want to hold off until Matt Johnson’s Operation Avalanche comes out instead.
