Slingshot review – Casey Affleck is impeccable in solid sci-fi saga

This is a very solid, if low-budget, addition to the sad-spaceman canon that already includes Interstellar, Ad Astra and Spaceman; it is also similar to Moon (with whom it shares a writer, Nathan Parker) in the cyclical rhythms and psychological disintegration of its lonely voyager. This is astronaut John (Casey Affleck) who wakes up from hibernation at three-month intervals on his mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan, with an invariably nauseated and put-upon look that is apparently channelling paparazzi shots of his brother, Ben.

In order to reach their destination, John, his ramrod commanding officer Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and engineer Nash (Tomer Capone) must pull off a dicey slingshot manoeuvre to exploit Jupiter’s gravity. But adding to John’s homesick reveries of Zoe (Emily Beecham), the woman he left behind, is an unexplainable bump in the void that leaves the crew fretting that the hull’s integrity may be compromised. With Nash freaking out and Franks unswayable about their objectives, John must choose whether to push the button marked “mutiny”.

What’s notable about the new interstellar disaffection is how the final frontier in movies is no longer a source of wonder and transcendence, but an excuse for exploring inner space. Which is 100% the trajectory taken by Slingshot, as it increasingly focuses on John’s flashbacks of Zoe (in which he has a Chris Hadfield tash) and his growing hallucinations. Directed by Swedish journeyman Mikael Håfström (The Rite, Escape Plan), it labours for an hour to find its own thematic core, but as the psychological pieces accumulate, the film starts to exert an inexorable pull in its exploration of cognitive dissonance and mental illness.

Sometimes the budget limitations show: locating the malfunction, for example, John pops his head up through a daft-looking hatch like a man checking the attic for squirrels. But this shut-in scenario is rivet-gunned by astute, underplayed performances all round, especially an impeccably buttoned-up Affleck exhibiting the emotional repression needed on such endeavours, and Fishburne coolly coercing his crew until he starts singing: “I’m just a man whose intentions are good … ” A slow-burn but effective trek.