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28 reviews in total

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29 out of 47 people found the following review useful:
Give it a miss..., 19 August 2003

Author: epsilon3 from England

I'm suprised about the amount of positivity expressed towards this movie as it is quite poor. As a long standing SF fan I was looking forward to it, despite it's low budget and the fact that the director's subsequent movies have been less than satisfactory.

The good points: The special effects are reasonable (although not great) and the set designs are excellent (quite reminiscent of Alien.)

The bad points: Cliche after cliche hits you until you can't take it seriously. The handsome tough guy cop who smokes a cigarette out of the corner of his mouth. You'll hate this character unless you like one dimensional humourless carboard cut out stereotypes.

The muscle bound convicts who bully everyone else. IS this a prison for body builders or something?

The geeky computer wiz kids and their quirky humour. How we laughed.

The obvious 'good guy saves the day' ending.

Malcolm Mcdowell. Why does he take movies like this? Such a fine actor is wasted here.

The plot holes are too numerous to mention here but there are lots and lots - probably about 44.

There really isn't anything to like about this film apart from the average visuals.

I advise you to give this one a miss and pick up a very similar but far superiour movie called 'Outland' starring Sean Connery and directed by Peter Hyams.

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24 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
A underrated classic B si-fi., 7 July 2002

Author: stormruston from victoria bc

I like to compare apples to apples,this is a B movie,so... compared to other B movies,this one is great.Michael Pare is almost always a very charismic actor,in this movie he is at the top of form,cool story,cool guy,and over the top acting(thats what makes a great B movie). Even my wife liked it.

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8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Very watchable blue collar SF, 31 January 2009

Author: blubb06 from Germany

If "Moon 44" deserves to be remembered, it's for authentic atmosphere. It breathes 80's style SF realism, a cross between "Aliens" and "Blade Runner" -- did they pilfer Deckard's living room interior for their company headquarters scenes, by the way? Look closely...

It was Roland Emmerich's first genre movie before "Independence Day", and the two share the same flaws. Yes, it is full of stereotypes and the end is cheesy, by "B-movie" standards, but it also has some good drama and an interesting mix of characters. The real letdown is Michael Paré as the pretty face/mercenary hero -- a little more depth to his bleak and boring character might have improved the ratings. The main assets of the film are its visuals, they make for a totally believable outer space "mining" colony. This is a rather low budget production, but you don't see it. With some refinement to the story, and a few long shots and explosions more, it might have come out really good. This is one of those films that make you wonder, what if.

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11 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Garbage! Garbage! Garbage! - And On The Down Side..., 30 December 2006
Author: junk-monkey (liam@merriol.freeserve.co.uk) from Highlands of Scotland

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

There is no reason on earth to watch this testosterone driven pile of pseudo homo-erotic horse cookies masquerading as an SF movie. The story could have been written on the back of a postage stamp (but is credited to have taken FOUR people to concoct). The visuals are totally derivative; take Alien, Outland, bits of Blade Runner, shove through blender. The acting is abysmal. Not even McDowell can summon up the effort to be interested in his lines and he can usually be counted on to have some fun with his roles.

If you do watch this movie after reading the trashing it gets on the IMDb there are some rewards to be got from it. It's one of those movies that lets you sit there and ask yourself questions like: What are the teenage whizz kid navigators actually FOR? All they do is say "Go faster!" or "Go up!" I mean if the muscle-bound ex-prisoner fighter pilots can't work out that crashing into canyon walls in a speeding helicopter is not a good idea then they are even thicker than they look (and boy do they look thick - physically as well as mentally. Where did these guys learn to fly? - The Charles Atlas Fight School of dynamic tension?).

As it turns out, these guys ARE as thick as two short planks because, having been told that their lives are in the hands of their teenage navigators they seem to think it's a good idea to anally rape one of them in the shower. Not clever.

Other questions you might like to ask yourself include why ALL the doors in this movie give off huge spurts of steam every time they open, or close. In fact, why does _everything_ in this movie give off great spurts of steam? Everywhere people go on the mining station steam shoots out at them from walls, doors, ceilings, and floor - even, unbelievably, the cockpit of a shuttle craft. They have steam lines in the cockpits of shuttle craft? Steam powered spaceships? Wow! Welcome to the future! In fact the only place where there is no steam to be seen is in the kitchens, the only place you would EXPECT to see it. It's that kind of dumb stupid movie. There must have been at least 3 guys on set whose only job was to fire off fire extinguishers at random - and stoke the smoke machine. There is an awful lot of smoke in this movie.

It also has that standard shot of space ship approaching planet. You know the one. Static peaceful planet swimming in space. Suddenly there is ominous music and from the side of the frame comes a metallic something which just keeps on going and going, getting bigger and bigger, a vast 3 mile long pile of plastic glued together to look like a spaceship, on and on it comes until the glowing bits at the back finally come into shot with a sound cue of jet enginey noises. Finally with this movie I worked out what has always bugged me about that shot. If the engines are blasting away like that it means the the ship is accelerating towards the planet. Surely anything having crossed interstellar space would be DEcelerating as it approached its destination. Standard operating procedure for that would mean that the ship should be approaching the planet arse first with its engines going - unless they were blasting out Suckions an as yet undiscovered form of anti-acceleratonic particle. Christ I was bored.

If for nothing else I will be grateful for this movie for being so vacant of anything worth watching or caring about that it gave me time to think that one out.

Worst Line: "I got fed up with talking to my French fries."

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
He knew what he was doing back then, too, 26 May 2010

Author: Grann-Bach (Grann-Bach@jubii.dk) from Denmark

No, I'm not really a "fan" of Emmerich. That wouldn't be the right word. And yes, his films tend to strain credulity so much that it risks breaking. But let's admit it... he makes good popcorn flicks(with the exception of 10,000 B.C., that was awful). They tend to be enjoyable, exciting and just plain fun. And this really is no exception; while he gets larger budgets and more attention today, he could certainly deliver back then, as well. This does have a big name... I mean, Alexander Kruemmel, that's plenty of letters. Just kidding; I'm referring to McDowell, of course. The acting ranges, though this does manage to make Paré appear almost charming. I loved seeing Brian Thompson again(two appearances in Charmed, minor role in The Terminator, and he's played Klingons; what he may lack in range, he attempts to make up for in muscle, cool to see), even if they gave him unflattering facial hair. The FX are great. Dialog is pretty good, humorous and can be fairly sharp. The sets are reminiscent of Alien, and quite nice. This has guts. There is commentary on the world. The tension is reasonably effective. Arguably, there is not a ton of action(with that said, what there is usually is well-done)... then again, it's 92 minutes sans credits. There is plenty of strong language, disturbing content and a little moderate violence in this. I recommend this to anyone looking for a quick, easy to get into, cheap sci-fi B-movie. 5/10

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Good looking, OK, but some mostly forgivable flaws, 27 June 2009

Author: jayarava from United Kingdom

This is a stylish looking movie, with moody lighting and atmospheric industrial sets. The space ships are cool - though why the good guys only have helicopters is a puzzle. The characters are likable enough but some are out-of-the-box Hollywood cutouts. The actors are either almost famous, or look hauntingly like people who are - I spent a lot of time wondering if I had seen them before (I hadn't it turns out). The story is OK, however there are a few plot glitches, and at times the story line is a bit thin. There are no real surprises - and no moral ambiguity. The dialogue is OK but once or twice stinks so bad you'll cringe (it may have been an attempt at humour?). At least there are no sudden swerves into the horror genre, and no completely unexplainable plot twists (as in Sunshine for instance).

If you like sci-fi anyway you probably be forgiving enough to enjoy this. I got the DVD for £1 at Tescos so I feel I got my money's worth.

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8 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Twinks From Space, 19 March 2009

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

It's 2038 the planet earth is out of national resources, but there's a whole asteroid belt of deserted, lifeless rocks from which all the world's resources can be drawn. But the planet earth has also split into various corporations instead of nations who are fighting for control of those asteroids. In fact one company is down to only one asteroid, the last stand will be made on Moon 44.

You know if you're expecting a serious study on earth's dwindling resources and what I personally think will eventually happen, the strip mining of dead worlds for resources, Moon 44 ain't the film for you. What we did get in between the giggles and the video game special effects was one of the great homo-erotic science fiction films of all time.

The defense craft are these helicopter type ships that only crazy people like prisoners will fly in exchange for commutation of sentence. They are navigated from the asteroid by these computer geek types. Pilot and navigator of necessity have to work together to fly these things. But the brawny prisoners and they are all brawny believe me have other ideas about bonding with these twinks from space.

Michael Pare is an internal affairs agent for the company going in undercover as a prisoner. Dean Devlin is the head twink, you don't really think he would be teamed with a hardened lifer did you?

Actors trained in the classics like Roscoe Lee Browne and Malcolm McDowell do the lines like they pearls from the Bard and they do it well. Might be some of the best acting these two gentlemen have ever done on screen.

We never see these villains, all we know is that they're not aliens just greedier humans than who Pare is working for. Or who is exactly working for who?

If you care to watch and get a few laughs, tune this monstrosity in.

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10 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Deep SF, 7 January 2002

Author: LLB3605 from Maryland USA

I'll be honest, I only watched this movie for Stephen Geoffreys, who I believe is one of the most talented and underrated male actors in Hollywood.

His character, "Cookie" the navigator, intrigued me. See, he's a futuristic drug dealer. Now usually, I write drug dealer characters off in movies as low-down scumbags ... and usually they are. But the writers here decided to give Cookie a soul. Cookie reveals about 3/4 of the way through the film the reason why he became a scumbag drug dealer -- not for the money, but for attention. Much like his characters in previous films ("Evil Ed" in Fright Night, "Hoax" in 976-EVIL, and "Wendell" in Fraternity Vacation spring to mind), he's a social outcast who used to get beat up regularly for just being a good guy. Hearing Stephen Geoffreys' sweet voice telling his story to a semi-comatose inmate/pilot (to whom he had secretly given "two double whammys" as revenge for a friend's homosexual rape by another inmate/pilot), you actually feel a little sorry for him -- too bad he didn't give it to the creep who raped his friend!

The movie itself runs a little slow overall, but for Stephen Geoffreys fans, it's a must-see. Just get a Kleenex or two ready for the ending...

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12 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Undeservedly Slipped Through The Cracks!, 6 May 2008

Author: Derek Williams (derekwilliams1974@yahoo.com) from New York, NY USA

During the eighties I used to purchase those fantastic Variety and Hollywood Reporter film market editions that were stuffed with movie poster ads advertising the latest film projects in various stages of development from dozens of companies. Unfortunately they stopped producing those great issues by the mid nineties. Anyway, I saw the poster ad for "Moon 44" and the imagery evoked Robert Heinlein. I couldn't wait for this film to come out and it never did. Or the film was in limited release. So finally, I secured a copy of this film on VHS cassette and checked it out. Here is my review.

"Moon 44" is actually a good sci-fi flick. I won't go into the story because you can get that elsewhere on this site. The movie struck me as a cross between "Outland" and "Brubaker". I think what also struck me is how impressive the production design was. I really felt I was watching a mining station on some far off celestial body. The acting was good and especially from Michael Pare and Brian Thompson. It's a good sci-fi film that is definitely worth a look!

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6 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
Cool beginning for Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin, 10 May 2002

Author: Agent10 from Tucson, AZ

Moon 44 is one of those little sci-fi films which really slipped through the cracks during the 1980s and early 90s. Sadly, these types of tales are nothing more than straight to video fodder with absolutely horrid acting, so this represents one of the last of the cool, dark sci-fi films. I was rather mesmerized the first time I watched this in 1992, and I thought it was better the second time around. This ranks as one of those dark films among the likes of Outland and Silent Running. Good show if I had seen any.

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