Film Review: Cosmic Sin, Directed by Edward Drake

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Cosmic Sin, somehow starring Bruce Willis and Frank Grillo, is the worst film I’ve ever reviewed, an 85-minute cure for insomnia posing as a sci-fi action film that dabbles in time dilation only in that it somehow feels like it took more than three lifetimes to watch.

Cosmic Sin opens with a few seconds of space CGI intercut with timeline title cards, telling us that Mars was colonised in 2031, and you’d be forgiven for thinking this first fifteen seconds of the film might hold some promise. The opening frame is a beautiful wide shot of space carnage which cuts to a group of space-suit wearing soldiers dodging debris as explosions rain chaos above – and that’s honestly the last good thing I can say about this entire film.

I’m known for being irritatingly merciful with reviews in general; I’ll always try and find the good in a performance or an album or a film or a play, try and find even the perspective of one person who might enjoy watching what I have, but this time I’ve failed, and I’m sorry universe. Even at 85 minutes, this film is 84 minutes too long, somehow warping reality around me to make me question my own sanity and existence.

Let’s start by saying that C.J. Perry (as Sol Cantos) and Frank Grillo (as General No-First-Name Ryle) commit as much as they possibly can to the handful of scenes they’re in, and somehow I’ve managed to forget that Ryle was both a General and the father of Braxton Ryle (Brandon Thomas Lee) despite it also being mentioned off-hand twice in the film because the entire film feels like a dream where you have to drive a car by solving mathematical equations and your driving instructor is Bruce Willis in a Velcro spacesuit.

While we’re talkin’ about Willis, his role here as random-name generator James “The Blood General” Ford reminded me of another forgettable sci-fi film he sleep-walked through recently, Breach, which I was horrified to discover is also directed by Edward Drake, who has apparently held Willis hostage for two more upcoming films, Apex, and American Siege which I can only assume is an experiment to see if we can finally make a replicant actor capable of passing The Turing Test.

As my sanity begins to slip away, let me use the last echoes of my fading brain cells in an attempt to summarise the absolute lunacy of Cosmic Sin’s first 20-or-so minutes:

In 10 years, we colonise Mars, and 11 years after that, The Alliance is formed, and we discover “Quantum Propulsion Technology that allows humankind to colonise the cosmos”.

At this point in the script, all numbers seem to have been entered by someone just wearing a blindfold and randomly tapping on keys, so 239 years later the Mars Colony fails and The Alliance rules over three colonies (Earth, Zafdie, and Ellora) until 238 years later, Zafdie attempts to secede from The Alliance and Bruce Willis “drops a Q-Bomb on the rebel colony”.

Now it’s six years later, in 2524, and we’re above Claimed Planet 4217LYA which I assume is Light Years Away, because why not, and Captain Juda Saule (Eva De Dominici) dramatically reports an “FC INCIDENT” when the security officer, Felix, hears a noise outside their tiny tent and unloads bullets into the air before saying “See babe, we’re 100%, absolutely, alone” before vanishing into the darkness amidst an audio pack of alien creature sounds.

Obviously, as the commanding officer alone on this distant, uncharted planet, she’s only armed with a pistol, unable to answer the question of “It’s crucial you tell us whether it was positive or negative for both species” (hmmmm) so we immediately cut to the flying cars of EARTH, where we forget all about those and instead meet General Ryle driving a gasoline-fueled pick-up truck and receive name drops for Dr Lea Goss (Perrey Reeves) and, again, James Ford, before saying, very explicitly into the phone “Tell. No one.”

Unfortunately for Ryle and ‘6 minutes after first contact’, disgraced former-General Ford is on his way to a road-side bar, where he talks with Young Oliver Platt Stand-In, Dash (co-writer and accomplice, Corey Large) and slams a few heads into the bartop before Demolition Man Marcus Bleck (Costas Mandylor) literally dances his way into the bar and tells everyone they need Ford “for a situation that could change the cosmos as we humble cavemen know them”.

Cosmic SinHe also lets the audience know Zafdie was ‘70 million souls’ which – I guess? – is supposed to make Ford sound like a monster but in reality just makes it sound ridiculously wasteful and wildly dumb to use a universe-destroying bomb on a population roughly the size of Thailand, France, the United Kingdom, or Italy. Don’t worry, the details of this or “why didn’t we just leave them alone in space?” of the situation is never explored after that so maybe they’d just figured out how to make weapons that didn’t require gunpowder-based ammunition?

There’s also a robot bartender with a light-up emoji face and a very convincing hologram of a singer on stage, but it seems this was the full extent of the technology as they’re never seen again, and is the kind of thing that you’d think would be useful in say, operating a Quantum Travel Machine, a Universe-Ending Bomb, or decontaminating five absolutely 100% alien-infected humans recovered from the opening scene in the gym showers of a Pentagon facsimile.

These twitching, grey-skinned lepers are hosed down by quarantine scientists wearing less protective equipment than you’d find in our real-life COVID centres, and eat two motionless guards before Young Ryle shoots one in the chest – no effect – and then slow-motion through the eye – instant kill – and screams “aim for the eyes”, which makes it immensely maddening that later he somehow drops a Universe Destroying Warlord Leader with three chest-shots using a pistol.

Cosmic SinSo, back to the gym showers, and finally the painfully slow security door is activated, and oh no, a soldier is trapped inside pleading to open the door like you’ve seen a thousand times, and then our lead scientist just casually mirrors the alien ‘hand of peace on the window’ before Young Ryle destroys security glass covering half the door with three bullets and the aliens escape.

But before we can dwell on that absurdity, what about the subject of technology? Why are the most elite, high-tech soldiers in the universe not able to use holograms, or robots, or literally anything other than items from the prop bin, even when they have to go and assess this universe-changing situation some 13 light-years away on Ellora.

Wait, why are we on Ellora? Because apparently in the four hours since first contact, an alien ship somehow found its way there, was shot down by the – hooo boy – population of about 30 people, and now they’ve managed to salvage one weird plasma weapon housed in a .50 calibre rifle that has less firepower than our own, useless weapons.

So, as this review breaks 1,000 words more than it should have been, I’ll just highlight reel some of the worst questions remaining on my mind:
  • How is there still a jukebox in this bar?
  • Why are elite spacesuits made of plastic?
  • How are the spacesuits made ‘for quantum warfare’ when it doesn’t exist?
  • How are cigarettes still a thing in 500 years?
  • How did we manage to get from 4217LYA to Earth, to the bar, then to the military base, and have the entire crew arrive in a spaceship in 19 in-world minutes?
  • How is NASA still a thing?
  • Why does everyone wear the same clothes as now?
  • Why does everyone have the same haircuts as now?
  • Why has our understanding of the universe not expanded, but seemingly reduced drastically, through utilising Quantum anything?
  • Why does a military base still have a fire alarm pull-lever on the wall?
  • Why do the smartest people in the world say things like ‘tachyon interference’ and ‘what, it’s just quantum displacement, it’s not like it’s rocket science’?
  • Why can neither the most elite soldiers on Earth, nor the most elite alien death soldiers in the universe not hit anything with their weapons?
  • How do their weird arm scanners literally say ‘ALIEN SHIP’ when pointing it at an alien ship but the best military in the universe can’t tell five, goo-vomiting grey-face aren’t infected with symbiotes?
  • Why did the aliens even use a tracking device when we’re later told they’re all one species and one mind?
  • How do any of these soldiers manage to survive teleporting into deep space and how do untrained techs and first-time guards fly effortlessly through a raging space battle?
  • How are these suits colliding when apparently they can green-flame teleport the moment they hit the ground?
  • Why does everyone still talk the same, with the same vocabulary, the same languages, the same accents, as though nothing has changed?
  • Why does a character change from British to French to Scottish to American and back again despite also being an Australian actor?
  • Why does this universe-conquering group of super aliens have a transportable Quantum portal and have only now detected anything else?
  • Why does the film try to justify the above by saying their home planet is – ughhh – 608912 light-years away?
  • Why is typing 608912 exactly the type of thing you’d do if you put your left and right fingers on the keyboard and just randomly typed ‘6’ then moved your fingers right to left repeatedly?
  • Who blackmailed half of the genuinely decent actors to star in this film and how horrifyingly good must that blackmail material be?
  • Who read this script and thought it was anything more than a nightmare?
  • How did this film get any sort of funding?
  • How did I manage to watch this film when my eyes were constantly rolled into the back of my skull?
  • How is this reality we live in not the darkest timeline?
  • What sins did we commit to deserve this type of eternal cinematic punishment?
  • Was this film made as a sort of sacrifice to a universe-ending god?
  • Why am I even asking these questions?

Just… why???

Dir: Edward Drake. Starring: Frank Grillo, Bruce Willis, Adelaide Kane, Brandon Thomas Lee, C.J. Perry, Corey Large, Lochlyn Munro, Costas Mandylor and Perry Reeves.

Cosmic Sin opens 11 March at a theatre near you.

Oxford Lamoureaux

Oxford Lamoureaux
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