The Moon - An Intense and Emotional Rescue Mission Drama Movie

There were plenty of publicity stunts for this movie done by one of the cinema social medias to increase the hype. It seemed to do the job nicely since the theaters showing the film were quite crowded, including the one that we went to 2 days ago. Anyway, my wife and I only went to see the movie on Sunday as we were quite busy with other activities the day before. All right, I'll just get on with it. 

Brief Story Line

The South Korean governments had been trying to send people to the moon for some time. Although their first mission was a failure, but few years later they managed to send a second mission with three astronauts including Hwang Sun-woo (Doh Kyung-soo - My Annoying Brother, Bad Prosecutor TV series etc), Lt Cho (Lee Yi-kyung - 6/45, Go Back Couple TV series etc) and Commander Lee (Kim Rae-won - The First Responders TV series, Crazy Romance etc). 

Unfortunately there were some troubles in this latest mission which endangered the lives of the astronauts and they had no choice but to call up the former Space Center director Kim Jae-guk (Sol Kyung-gu - Kill Boksoon, The Merciless etc) to handle the situation. Due to the severity of the issues, Kim sought the help from a director in NASA, Jennifer Yoon (Kim Hee-ae - The World of the Married, Queenmaker TV series etc). With time running out, everyone had to find ways to help the stranded astronaut. 

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Usually these kind of movies tends to be very heavy on the drama side and had serious tone. We would normally have to be fully concentrating to understand as likely there would be lots of scenes that were very technical. However, this movie was a bit different. There were not too many technological terms used and felt easy enough to grasp. I think it was due to they focus more on the dramatic side of the rescue mission, which thankfully did not make us overwhelmed by the technical side. 

The movie started off at normal pace with the explanation on the mission to the moon and introduction of the astronauts team. Pretty soon though, we would be dealt with some emotional scenes that would kickstart the whole premise which was the rescuing. I actually felt a bit of similarity in the plot with The Martian that starred Matt Damon, except the location was on Mars instead of the moon but the main story was about how people tried to find ways to help the astronaut. For a movie that emphasize on the space exploration, the visual effects had to be good to make us convinced and this film really did not disappoint. I thought they were amazing and I, for one was impressed by them.

Aside from those effects, I also admired the sound effects which were quite awesome. The musical score was definitely a plus point as it was done perfectly bringing out the audience's emotions. In fact, I think the whole movie was more like an emotional joyride where we would be feeling the suspense at one time and relieved later only to be brought back to harsh reality again. I think the director Kim Yong-hwa was brilliant enough in directing this movie. It should not come as a surprise since he was experienced in directing commercially and critically praised movies like Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days and its predecessor, 200 Pounds of Beauty and few others. He also was the writer for this movie.

The cast did great job as well portraying their roles. Although we could predict the significance of the main characters, but it was still worth the while to see how they would fare. In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were also support characters such as the current head of space center Jeong (Park Byung-eun - Decibel, Eve TV series etc), the minister of Science (Jo Han-chul - New Year Blues, Reborn Rich TV series etc) & his vice minister (Choi Byung-mo - Men of Plastic, Avengers Social Club TV series etc) who both sometimes provided lighter moments, Han-byeol the intern working for Kim Jae-guk (Hong Seung-hee - Pawn, Move to Heaven TV series etc) and few others. All of them made the movie with duration of 129 minutes did not feel that tiring. Oh, there were some mid end credit scenes which gave closure to few matters that I thought were not cleared before. But there was no post end credit scene.

Overall, this is an entertaining melodramatic movie about rescue mission on space, particularly on the moon. It was not the really heavy film that focused on one actor's acting capabilities like in Ad Astra but felt more like the showcase of humanity at its best. Though it might be a bit predictable, my wife and I still enjoyed this movie a lot. There were so many emotional moments in here which affected us and I think the audience as well. So if you have not seen this film yet, better give this a try in a studio with large screen and great sound system (the one we saw this was a bit too small and the sound was not exactly the best).

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars