Watching the science-fiction space thriller I.S.S., I couldn’t help but get the feeling that maybe this claustrophobic and talky material might be better suited as a stage play than as a movie, where audiences might be anticipating something a bit more compelling along the lines of a Gravity or an Alien.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s competent direction of Nick Shafir’s Black List script never manages to set the screen on fire as it is more focused on the increasingly tense relations between two trios – one American astronauts, the other Russian cosmonauts — aboard the International Space Station just as war between the two countries breaks out on Earth, causing great complication and conflict for the six.
Spending too long to get this 95-minute space opera rolling, we meet the various players including Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose), the newest arrival, joining with Commander Gordon (Chris Messina) and the slippery Christian Campbell (John Gallagher Jr.) on the U.S.
side, along with cosmonaut Weronika Vetrov (Masha Mashkova), Science Officer Alexey Pulov (Pilou Asbaek) and Commander Pulov (Costa Ronin) on the Russian side.
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