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Two figures escape a sandstorm by creeping into a dark structure. One is a disillusioned guard, the other is the desperate prisoner he’s chasing. Yet a revelation upends their expected cat-and-mouse game They’ve somehow stumbled upon a mostly operational spaceship that offers passage off this prison world and the freedom to start over.
With limited time before the authorities come to find the pair of them, the two lay aside their occupational differences and frantically work to get this “absurd” jury-rigged space jalopy up in the air. It’s a ludicrous, spontaneous Hail Mary pass that shouldn’t work but it does, and the flight of this mysterious spacecraft gets underway.
As the pair hurtle through space looking for direction, mysteries demand investigating. The ship itself is odd and full of curiosities from its former crew, but both the guard and prisoner are sitting on their own secrets. “There are no coincidences,” the prisoner mumbles. Amid the Scooby Dooing, there’s the never-ending work of fixing up the ship and dealing with the odd crisis that pops up, including some weird infection or hallucinations that may be caused by some discovered life form.
Final Voyage is a German indie flick that went as far away from your slick CGI space adventures as is possible to go. Most of the activity and focus take place inside the unnamed spacecraft, which calls to mind Alien’s Nostromo with its chunky tech, monochrome screens, and dimly lit rooms. The film crew intentionally shunned the use of computer graphics, leaning on real sets and practical effects for the entirety of this flick.
That’s laudable, although the pace certainly isn’t. This is nearly a two-hour movie with enough action and development to comfortably fit about half of that. Scenes stretch on and on, testing the patience of the viewer who in all likelihood is trying to nudge the pace along. “Great atmosphere, but slow as molasses,” as my film critic great-great-great grandmother was fond of saying.
I tried to stick it out for the atmosphere because this is space at its coldest, bleakest, and most instinctively terrifying. These two guys aren’t on a joy ride; they’re making a desperate ploy in a barely functioning can of life support. And with each of them becoming obsessive, paranoid, and/or delusional, there’s a good question of whether they’ll ever make it.
Remember, it’s a German movie, so success isn’t guaranteed.
As cool as the ship and concept are, The Final Voyage is hard to recommend unless you thrive on hard sci-fi and don’t mind the subtitles/dubbing, lack of conclusive answers, and overly long runtime.
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