COSMIC SIN
US, 2021, 88 minutes, Colour.
Frank Grillo, Bruce Willis, Brandon Thomas Lee, Corey Large, C.J.Perry, Lochlyn Munro, Costas Mandylor, Adelaide Kane.
Directed by Edward Drake.
Cosmic Sin sounds as if it ought with the title of a vast narrative about explorations of space, or a documentary about climate change and its effects. The title has overtones of metaphysics and theology. However, none of this is found here. It is an 88 minutes science-fiction, futuristic action show.
The film opens with a mini kind of Star Wars explanation of what is happening in the galaxies. We move through settlement of Mars, upheavals, wars, bombings, alliances until we reach the 26th century. Almost immediately, there is a first contact with some ugly aliens (variations on the Darth Vader look) who are threatening an outpost of the Alliance. Contact Earth, check with the commanding officer, his immediate reaction to calling a disgraced official who had dropped a Q Bomb killing 70 million people.
The commanding officer is played by Frank Grillo – who then seems to disappear for most of the film, finally arriving for some desperate heroism. The disgraced official is played by Bruce Willis, playing the familiar Bruce Willis, deadpan, smirk, bald domination.
The screenplay gives the impression of being incomplete, that there should be a longer director’s cut, elaborating on a whole lot of the characters, explaining the situations for greater clarity and audience participation. However, a group is collected around the commanding, they go off in their private space shuttles to the outpost to confront the aliens and save the day, save Earth.
The film generally plays like an old B-budget space exploration but with more elaborate special effects. One of the main difficulties is that the 26th century on earth looks extraordinarily similar to the present day on earth, familiar vehicles, some familiar technology, no improvement in the swearing vocabulary of the future… Even the bulb-lit robot serving at the bar, the bar looking familiar as do the bar brawls, even spilling the drink as it pours.
Which undermines a great deal of the credibility of the whole enterprise. and the dialogue is, to say the least, extremely conventional and less than sparkling.
Just checking the bloggers on the IMDb within weeks of the film’s release, there is 99% condemnation of the film, many of the bloggers not feeling the need to restrain any of their comments! (But, there is the distraction in realising the young hero, Brandon Thomas Lee, is Pamela Anderson’s son!)
There is an odd character called Dash, a friend of Bruce Willis’s commander, wandering in and out, spouting what seems somewhat dumb dialogue and behaving, perhaps intentionally comic, in a dumb manner on some serious circumstances. Then, it comes as something of a shock to find that this is the actor, Corey Large, who actually co-wrote the screenplay with the director, Edward Drake. Were we missing something?
