Review 777: Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary opens in space in the not-to-distant future,  

The film is based on the novel, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (who also wrote The Martian); Astronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakens on the spacecraft Hail Mary with no memory of himself or his mission. He deduces he is the sole survivor of a crew sent to the Tau Ceti system to save Earth from disaster. To do so, Grace must rely on his vast array of scientific knowledge, sheer ingenuity and human will, but he soon learns that he is not alone.

The film unfolds in a nonlinear fashion and opens with a series of overhead shots as Gosling's Ryland waking up from cry-sleep. Ryland suffers from retrograde amnesia and as the film went on, I realised that the flashbacks are basically memories of his life prior to the Hail Mary, we slowly learn about his life prior to the mission. 

Project Hail Mary is a film about friendship, communication and how miracles are possible. The friendship that develops between Ryland and Rocky the rock monster is really the emotional core of the film  

Project Hail Mary much like The Martian mixes space exploration with technical brilliance. 

Project Hail Mary was directed by directing duo Phil Lord & Chris Miller (who's previous work has been primarily comedies such as the 21 Jump Street movies and The Lego Movie, none of which I seem to have reviewed or indeed seen. And considering they were fired from directing Solo (but we don't talk about that), I had a few reservations going to see this film and was worried that they would dumb it down to say the least. I was surprised at how well and earnestly they handled the material 

the cinematography is stunning and captures the vastness and the detail of space as well as lighting up with beautiful imagery that recalls Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lord & Miller's emphasis on bright, exaggerated colours are on full display in a scene where Ryland Grace explores the  The Production design is fantastic, the titular ship itself feels like a tactile, functioning 

At the centre of Project Hail Mary is Ryan Gosling   he really carries this film on his shoulders   bringing to life his character's sense of irony which proves what an excellent comic actor he is  In the end, he steps up not because he is the best, but because he's the only man for the job and because millions of lives back on Earth depend on him. And much like Matt Damon's Mark Whatney in The Martian, he has a high amusing video logs with  "I'm not an astronaut. I put the "not" in astronaut" he tells 

a rock monster named Rocky who learns to communicate with Ryland via a speak and spell. Rather awesome. The Their means of communicating and the  is what makes Ryland & Rocky such a good double act. 

Apart from Gosling, the only other noteworthy cast member who isn't a rock creature is Sandra Huller from Anatomy of a Fall playing Dr. Eva Stratt, the head of the Hail Mary project and Ryland's superior. Basically, Eva recruited Ryland  

Ken Lung, Milana Vayntrub from NBC's This Is Us & Lional Boyce round out the films small cast with competent but ultimately unmemorable performances.