Slingshot

His surprisingly excellent Stephen King adaptation 1408 aside, Mikael Håfström has always been a solid if unmemorable journeyman director of mediocre genre fare – movies like The Rite, the 2013 The Exorcist knockoff starring Anthony Hopkins, and Escape Plan, a 2013 action romp that gave us Arnie versus Sly Stallone 20 years after anyone could really get excited.

What those films really indicate is Håfström’s ability to grab a cast that’s better than the scripts usually suggest or require. It’s the same with sci-fi drama Slingshot, the latest addition to the space madness subgenre. However, while the script by R. Scott Adams (Donner Pass) and Nathan Parker (Moon) may be derivative and clunky (especially when it comes to exposition dumps), there’s an element of intrigue to the journey of astronaut John. With Casey Affleck bringing his tried-and-tested weary-but-wonderstruck persona, there’s an inevitable grounded nature to John’s journey to Titan. It’s the archetypal world-saving excursion, with a NASA team of three – pilot John, astro engineer Nash (Capone, The Boys), and Captain Franks (Fishburne). Of course, communication with Earth goes down just as they’re about to undertake a risky maneuver – the titular slingshot, using Jupiter’s gravitational field to send them to Saturn’s largest moon.

The derivative look and feel of Slingshot – a little bit of Interstellar, a dash of 2010: The Year We Make Contact for whenever Håfström wants to add some grit, and most especially Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris remake – make it unclear exactly what kind of movie Håfström is trying to make. The mental decline brought on by too many months in the hibernation pods leads to violence, but at the same time it forces John to reconsider and relitigate his relationship with project researcher Zoe (Beecham), who is still back on Earth. The two aspects are intertwined, but the more generic plotline of the crew turning on each other is a little mundane, and driven mostly by Fishburne breaking out his growly, domineering schtick. What’s far more interesting is the interplay between John and Zoe in his memories, especially since the fate of the mission depends on her calculations, made back on Earth and impossible to recalculate now that there’s a billion miles between them. The script makes hints toward that emotional weight, of John’s trust in her numbers as an indicator of his trust in her, and his faith in their relationship.

These elements are closest to the kind of probing metaphysical ruminations that Parker pulled off in Moon. But nothing in this unreliable narration comes close to the depths that were achieved when he sent multiple Sam Rockwells into space. Well, nothing except Affleck, who excels at characters like John, a man struggling to retain some sense of self-knowledge.

Yet again, Håfström pulls in a cast that is better than the material, seemingly in the hope that they’ll drag the best out of the script. Unfortunately, even Affleck can’t fill the vacuum in between all the predictable beats and the insufferable series of twists and reveals that undercut any empathy for the characters. Worse, those scenes between John and Zoe are the most engaging part of the film but they’re where he channels Solaris most overtly. Good as Affleck and Beecham are, they’re never given the time or space to develop their relationship that Soderbergh gifted to George Clooney and Natascha McElhone. If Slingshot leaned into that character study, rather than roughly gaffer-taping it to a deep space thriller, maybe it wouldn’t stall out on the launch pad so badly.