In “Slingshot,” a space thriller directed by Mikael Håfström, the title refers to a risky flight maneuver that involves orbital mechanics. Astronauts traveling a billion kilometers to one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, need a gravity assist – the “slingshot” in question – that depends on Jupiter’s orbital speed to make it to their destination. Why are they flying to Titan? It’s the only other planet that has a liquid on its surface, methane, which they hope to harvest for clean energy to combat climate change on Earth.
Yet despite the snappy title and seemingly action-packed premise, this psychological character study starring Casey Affleck is a grind. The film isn’t about the slingshot, the methane gas or even climate change, but about the challenges of the journey itself. To survive the year-long voyage, the crew must “hibernate” in three-month chunks, their sleep aided by heavy doses of medication, causing disorientation and confusion every time they wake up to complete a task.
John (Affleck), an ambitious pilot who has passed a rigorous selection process for this dangerous mission, spends most of his time on board shaking off dreamy visions of his former lover Zoe (Emily Beecham), one of the designers of the state-of-the-art spaceship. Whenever he falls asleep, he dreams of Zoe rolling around in bedsheets, and every time he wakes up, he fights through a mental fog to discern what is real and what is not, or argues with his colleagues about their orders.
The situation with the other crew, Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and scientist Nash (Tomer Capone), becomes increasingly unbearable as their mental health deteriorates over the course of many grueling periods of hibernation. When the ship is mysteriously damaged, possibly due to structural stress, Franks is determined to complete the mission while Nash wants to turn back. John is caught in the middle. Despite this central tension, Slingshot is an undeniably sleepy film, with a dazed Affleck stumbling around in a spaceship for most of its run.
While Nash sows the seeds of mutiny, Franks tries to regain control by force, using both physical violence and mental manipulation. Ultimately, the whole thing plays out a bit like Gaslight in outer space, with Fishburne playing Charles Boyer opposite Affleck’s Ingrid Bergman. Screenwriters R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker don’t bother to delve into the existing themes or big ideas, instead piling one twist after another into the script just to keep things from getting too sleepwalking.
The desire to know what is real and what isn’t is still slightly compelling enough to keep us hooked, but the constant flashbacks to a cheesy and implausible romance where John and Zoe lie on the floor talking about moths have a devastating effect on the dynamic. The great Beecham is burdened with a dreary hairdo and an even drearier role, her character simply an object of pale longing for the sleepy John. Affleck seems lethargic even in flashbacks and is completely implausible as a top pilot in his late 30s. Affleck sleepwalks in this film in more ways than one.
Håfström’s direction is equally sluggish. While there is some nice lighting in the hibernation pods, the creative choices surrounding John’s hallucinations are predictable and perfunctory. Aside from Fishburne’s performance, which is the film’s only compelling element, there’s simply nothing to grab you, and even that is a variation on his iconic Morpheus role in The Matrix. Despite the many twists and turns that never let up, there’s just no sign of life in Slingshot.
