Stowaway – What it Ended Like That?
Director: Joe Penna
Writer: Joe Penna, Ryan Morrison (Screenplay)
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier Anderson, Toni Collette
Plot: A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.
Runtime: 1 Hour 56 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Stowaway starts as Captain Marina Barnett (Collette), Dr Zoe Levenson (Kendrick) and David Kim (Kim) go on their mission to Mars, which seems to have started smoothly enough, until they discover Michael Adams (Anderson) hidden on the ship after getting trapped in the life support part of the ship.
As the crew access the damage, they make the discovery that with Michael on board, they don’t have enough oxygen to complete the mission, putting them into a position where they must discuss the impossible or risk losing everyone on board the ship.
Thoughts on Stowaway
Characters & Performances – Marina Barnett is the woman leading the mission, having to make the final big decisions for the crew, needing to take charge of a worsening situation. Zoe Levenson is the doctor on board that must make sure the crew remain healthy through the mission and puts up the biggest moral argument about not leaving someone behind. David Kim in the research expert that has spent his whole life creating the research for this mission, he finds himself giving that all up in hopes of finding a way to save Michael. Michael is one of the crews engineers that finds himself trapped before take-off, going on the mission a place he doesn’t want to be, a place he has no option but to take part in, however much of a problem him being there will be for the rest of the crew. The cast of actors in this film are all big names that are all good, but they do seem like they are miscast in many places, with Anna Kendrick never looking like she could be in this role and wasting what Toni Collette and Daniel Dae Kim could bring to a film.
Story – The story here follows three astronauts that learn another man has accidently found himself stuck on the ship during the mission, leading to the crew needing to make a difficult decision to make the mission a success. This story does have an interesting idea, which would easily have dived into the deeper moral discussion of what is going on, only it all seems to fizzle out and leave us with one of the emptiest endings I have ever seen. The story ends up feeling too flat to reach the full potential, like it was missing a scene or too.
Themes – Stowaway is a sci-fi movie that is based on a space craft, which for the set looks amazing which will give us the openness of space, being the best part of the film by a long way.
Stowaway is a film filled with potential, it looks amazing, only it falls completely flat.