Slingshot is a frustrating and frustrated science fiction film that has one tiny bit of scientific knowledge and hand-waves away the rest. But I was ok with that since it’s a low budget film that opts to go psychological over scientific. At least for awhile… and then it becomes a hand waving whatever goes mess.

The flick is about a trio of astronauts bound for Saturn’s moon Titan. The title refers to a gravity assist slingshot maneuver around Jupiter to give them the speed to reach Titan. But the crew, who spend much of their time in hibernation, are starting to get worried about the mission and the survivability of their ship.

Casey Affleck is our lead and he’s joined by a corpulent Laurence Fishburn who was likely hired to remind us of Event Horizon but doesn’t exactly fit the body type of an astronaut. The third crewmember is Tomer Capone… better known as Frenchie from The Boys. They do their best to make this script work.

I’m not going to bag on the science too much even if they are trying to be a hard science fiction film. They don’t have the budget for a lot of big effects or simulated zero gravity. I’m fine with hand-waving artificial gravity and all that jazz because this is a psychological drama, not a sci-fi film.

And as a psychological drama, the movie can’t decide what it wants to be so it tries to be all things to all people. I predicted the ending well in advance… and then they changed their mind and practically shouted “Fooled you!”. And, yeah, good job movie… you win by not choosing a path and letting everyone be right. Good job.

Yeah, I was annoyed by the various decisions and paranoid freakouts in the film, partly because this isn’t how a team of astronauts would act. I can live with the wobbly science, but telling me these are the best of the best given how irrational everyone is was a problem. But, again, the movie has it any way it pleases and their actions can be attributed to whatever plot the film goes with at any given time.

I’m not sure if this is a bad movie so much as annoyingly non-committal. There are much better hard science fiction films out there, both remembered and forgotten. There are much better psychologic dramas, even ones that offer up multiple interpretations. Watch one of those instead.

Score: 69