DIRECTOR: Daniel Espinosa. CAST: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca
Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya SCRIPTWRITER: Rhett Reese, Paul
Wernick PRODUCER: Bonnie Curtis,
Julie Lynn MUSIC: Jon
Ekstrand CINEMATOGRAPHY: Seamus
McGarvey EDITOR: Frances
Parker, MaryJo Markey
PRODUCER: David Ellison, Dana
Goldberg DISTRIBUTOR: Columbia
Pictures COUNTRY: USA GENRE:
SciFi, suspense RUNNING
TIME: 103 minutes
Technical assessment: 3
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: V14
MTRCB rating: R13
Aboard an International Space Station, a six-member team tasked to retrieve
an unmanned space capsule carrying soil sample from Mars. The team’s biologist,
Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare) successfully revives the dormant organism, later
named “Calvin” by schoolchildren on Earth.
While jubilant that they are in possession of the first proof of extra-terrestrial
life, the astronauts implement
a safety protocol to ensure that the experiment is contained in the
spacecraft’s laboratory. Calvin grows amazingly fast from
single to multi-celled organism, turns hostile, and fatally attacks four of the
crew members, starting with Derry followed by American systems engineer Rory Adams
(Ryan Reynolds), Russian commander Katerina Golovkina (Olga
Dihovichnaya), and Japanese space pilot Sho Murakami (Hiroyuki Sanada). The remaining crew members, British quarantine
officer Dr. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson) and American senior medical officer
Dr. David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal), separately take two emergency escape
pods—one to take Calvin to deep space away from Earth, the other one to return
to Earth and report the fate of the mission.
The
opening scene takes the viewer to a dizzying upside-down zoom of the space
station. While all too familiar, the shots nevertheless are meticulously
rendered and the camera succeeds in giving the viewer a feel of life in space. Although editing and cinematography are good,
the music tends to distract. The actors struggle
with poor script that make them—especially Bakare, Dihovichnaya, and
Sanada—sound like they are reading their lines straight from a scientific
journal. Character development, however,
is sufficient as a palette for when complications escalate in the story that
has Calvin as the star outsmarting the human experts. Director Espinosa takes care not to let Life become another guess-who-dies-next
thriller by maintaining a sober tone and presenting capable characters who
problem-solve at the skill level demanded by their profession. The suspense aspect succeeds in giving
thrills to the viewer, with the final sequence sealing Life as a dark, intense, and ominous film.
There is only one Creator of life—God, and not even the most highly
educated human scientists. Scientific
research should be carried out from God’s gifts of knowledge, talent and
skills to mankind. Life delves into the broader theme of
bioethics, demonstrating how man uses biology and medicine to create new life.
The intent of the mission’s team is noble: to test, to culture, and possibly to
evolve an organism that may someday help mankind. In the film, nature destined the organism
from Mars to remain dormant in space, but man interfered and changed the
ecosystem. Hence the destruction. The
film does not prevaricate in showing the destructive side of the issue, and for
that it is commendable. Commendable,
too, is the willingness of the members of the space mission to sacrifice their
lives to contain the alien life form in space and keep it from invading earth.
