The Last Scout

A pretty decent space thriller. The atmosphere and script were good, though at times the acting was a bit over the top. The sound quality was weird at times, echoey and hard to understand.

Decent special effects but some props like the control panel were pretty bad ... like someone taped a bunch of iPads to it with abstract images being displayed, decided it didn't look "spacey" enough, and attached some obnoxiously flashing lights which obviously had no purpose beyond flashing constantly.

The plot was fairly well developed, and neither innovative or derivative. It was interesting enough to keep me watching it, but not very memorable. Basically a decent way to kill a couple hours.

...and so it should be! When mankind destroy the Earth in 67 minutes, it falls to some astronauts to seek out a suitable new home for who's left of us somewhere in the galaxy. Now proof, if it were ever needed, that we need to work on our disaster-planning recruitment process now ensues as this motley and increasingly dysfunctional bunch on the "Pegasus" encounter a derelict spaceship populated by mysterious children. What now plays out is a predictable cat and mouse, spaceship, drama with nobody sure who to trust; old grudges rearing their ugly heads and the future of humanity clearly placed in the most precarious of situations. To be fair, the production standards and visual effects are not the worst, but the inane and plentiful dialogue and a shockingly mediocre cast of drama school drop-out types do the mean, moody and magnificent in an almost embarrassingly risible fashion. It's an old story that is clearly a labour of love for Simon Philipps and Paul Tanter, but it's not an original bone in it's body and at only ten minutes short of two hours - well, it's just far too long and meandering. I love my sci-fi, but this is really pretty derivative and poor.

First to say, this is not a new 'Sunshine' (2007), nor 'Pandorum' (2009) . If you want one of those, you have to look elsewhere.

The basic story is quite similar though - a spaceship, here not so big, and with only a few people on board, searching for the last resort of mankind , while earth herself is nearly destroyed. The main difference to 'Sunshine' and 'Pandorum' is the amount of bloodshed, and also the budget, which was approx. a tenth of each of the former's.

It may be true that the first 40 minutes are a bit hard to overcome for the average sf-action lover. There we learn to know the crew, which is a bit of a family since they are now together for seven years, as we are told. The movie takes it's time to establish a certain mood of day-life, instead of bringing up severe conflicts or delusions and problems immediately. That's OK, if you ask me, I do sometimes like a more lifelike approach. And who, when not astronauts, should be able to live through such a long journey ?

When the ship encounters the derelict ship, as described in the story-line, the movie gains momentum as it should, and it doesn't lose it until the end, providing enough tension and action for a rainy evening in front of the flat-screen. Acting is solid, directing and special effects are OK for a Direct-to-Video or Video-On-Demand production (which I assume it is).

As the budget may dictate, 'The last scout' cannot claim to be special or outstanding, like said examples, and it doesn't want to. Instead, it tells its story, and this is where it looses some stars, the story ingredients are too much copied from those other movies, minus a certain amount of their violence, to be suitable for families, I think. It would have taken only a bit of time to form a more creative and interesting solution within the premises, at least avoiding said big models. So, for the SF veteran, the outcome and the explanations toward the end are a bit disappointing.

I can give the movie yet 6/10, as 5 would be too low in my eyes.

One of the most boring movies i have ever had the displeasure to wear my TV out on watching. So bad it wasn't funny! the actual acting wasn't too bad but Geez the cinematography!, the cockpit looked like a gray box with some 7" tablets as instrument panels with flashing lights all the same color on it! I wish i hadn't watched the thing now!

As for inside the ship! oh my god! probably the best way to describe it is it was done on a budget of $50

Don't waste your time!

For a low budget movie, this film had great acting, an understandable plot, and believable dialogue -- for the first half of the film. The cinematography was very good considering the budget, except it was often way too dark, probably to hide the lousy sets. The score was pretty good, too. But those sets and props, wow, pretty bad. Clothes dryer vents hanging from the ceiling, and the crew was wearing 3M respirators freshly painted over with shiny spray paint and snow boots for their spacesuits. And the ship was held together with tapered wood screws!

Okay, they couldn't afford props. But as I said the acting was well above what you normally see in these cheap films. Plus there was actual character development -- the audience really got to know who those folks were on that spaceship. With real, natural dialogue.

But about midway through the film, it completely falls apart. It's like two different people wrote the first and second half of this film. It starts off as really great straight science fiction movie with a real, consistent plot and characters. Then halfway through, it turns into a snuff film. And the plot scenarios just kept getting more and more ridiculous -- one improbably situation after another. And in the second half of the film, none of the behaviours of the characters had any motivation or grounding in reality, whereas in the beginning, their actions were consistent with their characters and the situations they faced.

Another great thing about this film was that it was very progressive on race. This very small set of characters included a black man, and he had a romantic relationship with one of the (white) female astronauts. There wasn't any hint of derision or bias that I could detect. I'm adding a couple of points to my rating for this fair treatment of race.

My recommendation is to watch the first half of this film until they have the code orange. (It's explained in film -- it happens about half way through.) After that, just turn it off, and write your own ending. It has to be better than what they did to the second half of this film.

triggers: gory depictions of corpses; gory violence; gun (laser) violence

rating 7/10 (for the first half); (submitted July 5, 2020, 1:55 a.m. EDT)