Movie Review: I.S.S.

The new movie “I. S. S.” is about an outstanding story idea about what would the Russian and American astronauts do if while they were circling the earth in the International Space Station, a major nuclear war broke out between the United States and Russia. What would happen, how would the Russian and American astronauts react if they were ordered to take over the space station, including killing all on board from the other country? Unfortunately, this is one of those films that took a great idea, iand turned it nto a ridiculous movie, because the screenplay is so bad. After the nuclear war began and it was obvious that the planet Earth was almost completely covered by fire, nothing but irrational and idiotic events occurred, starting with the Russian woman scientist going insane, even to the point of trying to blow up the space station. Why would anyone do this, was never explained, and given the circumstances made absolutely no sense.

What follows are some hand-to-hand fights, some for completely unexplained explained reasons. While sitting through this almost 2-hour movie, I was amazed at how bad the story was, including the motivations of 6 astronauts under the most extreme circumstances. This movie represents a huge “opportunity lost” for a screenplay, that should have brought the message that in the event of any nuclear war, nobody wins. With nuclear war, everybody dies either immediately or over time, due to radiation and nuclear winter. Six human beings on opposite sides on a space station circling the Earth during a huge nuclear war are a microcosm of the obvious fundamental concept – “how can there be a winner if everybody is dead?”. The other obvious storyline missed in this film is that in the event of nuclear war, everybody on the space station also dies because there is no world to ever return to once the war is over. This is a film that probably could have been rescued because of the great idea, and all it would have taken would have been about 5 more rewrites of the screenplay. Under circumstances like this, we all want to believe that intelligence will always win over insanity.

The cast of I.S.S. includes Ariana DeBose as Dr. Kira Foster, is one of the 3 American astronauts and the only well known actor in this cast.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of a low 62% are this time around, correct. I agree with this rating and rate this film a solid pass, due to the stupid story direction that ruined a great idea for a new movie about space travel.