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Marooned Movie Review

Marooned is a 1969 science fiction film directed by John Sturges and starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman. It’s a disappointing movie.

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“Alright, look.

Let’s do this scientifically:

two big guys throw the little guy out, okay?“

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It follows three astronauts who are trapped and slowly suffocating in space. The movie was released very close to the Moon landing, so of course it makes it historically intriguing. Having been released a year after ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, that made this attempt at science fiction obviously influenced by that masterpiece, especially in terms of emphasis on science and technology.

However, that turned out to be its downfall unfortunately. I would have liked to have seen some of the tech details, but when it comes to space itself, but most of this film is actually Earth-based, which was super disappointing. And simply the abundance of unnecessary tech facts really made this film a chore to sit through as it’s quite boring to be honest.

The third act did feature some excitement as it was suitably intense, but most of the film is devoid of either suspense or excitement. It’s surprisingly tiresome, and due to its very long runtime, it was stopped in its tracks before it ever gained storytelling momentum.

I also found its actors underused, though they are all very good. Gene Hackman is quite good and all of the astronauts were fine, but Gregory Peck got the most scenes and he was great, but again the Earth-based scenes were way too numerous.

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Marooned is technically quite strong, though nowhere near as amazing as ‘2001’. I could see some of the effects work at play, but overall most of the visual effects were quite good and impressive even for its time. I found the cinematography terrific and the acting’s great, but the direction from John Sturges is surprisingly weak and the lack of a score in the film made it less impactful for sure. Some scenes feature terrific imagery at display, but overall those came way too few and far between.

Though technically very strong, very well acted and intense in its third act, most of Marooned was overly slow in pace, riddled with way too many technical details, and thus quite slow and rarely gaining any momentum. It’s interesting historically speaking, but as a movie, it is quite disappointing.

My Rating – 3

You can get Marooned on Amazon.