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DUBAI: Ever since Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” swept the Oscars in 2013, there’s been a rise in so-called ‘hard sci-fi’ movies looking to recapture that sense of gritty survival in the face of insurmountable (not to mention, extra-terrestrial) odds.
Netflix’s “Stowaway” certainly has the right team in place. Brazilian director Joe Penna and his co-writer Ryan Morrison won a lot of admirers with 2018’s “Arctic” a survival thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen as a stranded pilot in the Arctic Circle who just can’t catch a break. Not content with having their protagonists put through the wringer from a survival point of view, in “Stowaway,” Penna and Morrison decide to throw a nasty moral quandary into the mix as well.
Anna Kendrick in “Stowaway.” (Netflix/TNS)
Published May 04. 2021 7:07AM
Adam Graham, The Detroit News Get the weekly rundown Email Submit
A three-person crew is on a journey bound for Mars when a fourth person is discovered on board. The more the merrier? Not in this case, as there s only enough oxygen on board for three. So either someone needs to hold their breath or an uncomfortable discussion needs to take place.
That s the set-up for Stowaway, which looks like a sci-fi thriller but unfolds like a straightforward moral play. It s a simple numbers game: someone s gotta go. But how do you measure the value of a life under extreme circumstances?