Stowaway (2021) [TV-MA] ***

I could care less that all the film critics are raving about this Netflix direct-to-TV film as a great character study. For me it’s an indictment of this wonderful let’s all go to Mars obsession. And why does everyone want to go to Mars? Well, first it’s a wonderful money-making opportunity for billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Yuri Milner. In fact there’s a Wikipedia page (link below) titled Billionaire space race. Second, because eventually there will be another extinction-level-event like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago, and it will be nice to have another planet to call home. And, third, because we have totally f*cked up our environment here on Earth. But what everyone is forgetting is that we will, in all likelihood, do exactly the same thing to Mars that we’ve done to Earth. After all, we’re only human.

So, Stowaway tells the story of a two-year, three-person supply mission to the Red Planet. There’s Mission Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), physician Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick) and botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim). They are employees of a profit-making company called Hyperion, and they’re in a spaceship that was originally designed for two people and was reconfigured, and made more fragile and less safe, to accommodate a third, all in an effort to keep costs down.

Twelve hours after launch they discover that there’s a stowaway aboard, Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson), although technically he’s not a stowaway. He’s a launch support technician and he was configuring some explosive release bolts or something else and was injured and blacked out and they launched with him still on board. I forget – isn’t this why the O.R. nurses count the sponges before the surgeon sews up the patient on the operating table?

When the crew discovers Michael he needs immediate medical care which Zoe gives him. Also, since he breaks Marina’s arm when he falls out of the compartment, Zoe tends to her, including 3D printing a splint for her arm using Makerbot hardware – a product placement, very clever! But the biggest problem they later discover is that their CDRA – carbon dioxide removal assembly – was totally destroyed because it was in the compartment along with Michael, and of course there’s no replacement. What? The CDRA is the size of a briefcase. It’s totally vital to the mission and they couldn’t pack a backup – or two? They have lithium hydroxide canisters but those are designed as backup, not to be CO2 scrubbers for the entire two-year voyage.

The conclusion is that they can make the trip with three people but not four, and Michael, being a stowaway and black, is expendable. But Zoe is convinced that there is extra oxygen in the rocket engine fuel tanks and if they can fill up their smaller portable tanks they can have enough oxygen for all four of them to make the roundtrip. But of course those oxygen tanks are at the other end of the ship several hundred yards away by spacewalk.

So, without giving everything away, let me just say that this is a slow-moving, outer-space, sci-fi character study with zero memorable dialogue, a banal soundtrack, several technological goofs and a not-very-happy ending.

For me, the best recent film in the genre is Passengers (2016) with Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt and Michael Sheen. I would say forget about Stowaway and watch Passengers again.[Blogger's rating: 3 stars out of 5 = 50%

Labels: drama, Netflix, sci-fi, thriller, tragedy
IMDb 56/100 
MetaScore (critics=62, viewers=49) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=64, viewers=68) 
Netflix 
Billionaire space race