Most of the reviews of this movie came around the time it made its debut. Now it's a dozen years later... and this piece of trash sure hasn't aged well.But even if this were opening day, this absolutely abysmal movie would still rank as one of the worst in history.It starts out with some of the worst acting I've ever seen, people sitting around a conference table at a major corporation. I swear it looks like the director or producer just decided to cut costs and have his friends and family fill in for real actors. One can really appreciate good acting when one sees the complete opposite.The worst, most ill-conceived character is the Sergeant aboard the space ship. His dialogue is contradictory nonsense. I couldn't believe my ears. It was stupefying. Maybe standards for movie making were more lax back then, but his was incomprehensible.All the characters are cartoonish, the acting is horrendous, and the amateurish "plot" is just an embarrassment to anyone who loves good movies. This one insults our intelligence at every turn.As you probably know, this movie is about the (grim) future when we need to exploit space for raw materials. One massive company is losing all their moon mining operations to pirates. Their cargo shuttles, full of raw materials, go missing. Therefore, they need to find out what's going on, or the company will lose everything.That could be an interesting premise for a movie, but not the way it was done here. Every lame cliché was put to dutiful use, every cookie cutter character was used. Nothing worthy of our time or attention. This was paint by numbers, and sloppily done.This is by no means some elitist review. I love movies of all sort. I wasn't looking for some intellectual "art house" film. This review is negative because the entire film, from start to finish, is just a horrid waste of our time.

Not the sequel to Moon 43, as most folks would guess, but really a boring sci-fi flick set in the future, where rivals companies duke it out to control mineral sources in space. One such company keeps losing shuttles (Huge machines that mine for minerals) to a rival company, so they get the big idea of sending ex-cons to man Moon 44's defence system, which is run by a bunch of geeks. Additionally, the company send an internal affairs cop up there (as an ex-con) to find out exactly where some missing shuttles have gone up to, and therefore Moon 44 begins it's slow, soap opera like plot.Your ex-cons (including Brian Thompson of Hired to Kill) don't sit well with the geeks (including that guy from 976-EVIL), and head of the station, Malcolm McDowell (of Cyborg 3: The Recycler) tries to mediate between them both. Our hero, Stone, seems to upset just about everybody and is first up to man the defence system, which seems to be a toy helicopter driven by Stone with remote help from his allotted geek. This is even more boring than it sounds, as we're subjected to really bad special effects involving toy helicopters flying around a canyon, and not much else. I'm not one to rag on bad special effects either, but there's really not much else going on except for the drama.You've got the cons up against the geeks, not helped by one con botting one of the geeks against his will. You've got Brian Thompson versus Stone, and Stone versus Maclom McDowell and some Sargeant guy. Add to this that everything looks like the director really, really likes Ridley Scott and James Cameron (the interiors are all Blade Runner and Alien like), complete with evil corporation, and you've got a film with plenty of set up and no pay off. The bad guys, when they do appear, kind of look like Johnny Five if he'd turn to crack cocaine and flew off into space. Moon 44 is a drag from start to finish and I was just waiting for it end, which it thankfully does without a single surprise. I can take bad effects and cheap sets, but the one thing I do not like in a film is nothing happening. For McDowell fans, he's here for about five minutes total and doesn't do much. This film chugs off donkeys for cash. Behind a skip in Shipley. I've just realised that this was directed by a hot shot director! Well the guy that gave us Independence Day at least.

No, I'm not really a "fan" of Emmerich. That wouldn't be the right word. And yes, his films tend to strain credulity so much that it risks breaking. But let's admit it... he makes good popcorn flicks(with the exception of 10,000 B.C., that was awful). They tend to be enjoyable, exciting and just plain fun. And this really is no exception; while he gets larger budgets and more attention today, he could certainly deliver back then, as well. This does have a big name... I mean, Alexander Kruemmel, that's plenty of letters. Just kidding; I'm referring to McDowell, of course. The acting ranges, though this does manage to make Paré appear almost charming. I loved seeing Brian Thompson again(two appearances in Charmed, minor role in The Terminator, and he's played Klingons; what he may lack in range, he attempts to make up for in muscle, cool to see), even if they gave him unflattering facial hair. The FX are great. Dialog is pretty good, humorous and can be fairly sharp. The sets are reminiscent of Alien, and quite nice. This has guts. There is commentary on the world. The tension is reasonably effective. Arguably, there is not a ton of action(with that said, what there is usually is well-done)... then again, it's 92 minutes sans credits. There is plenty of strong language, disturbing content and a little moderate violence in this. I recommend this to anyone looking for a quick, easy to get into, cheap sci-fi B-movie. 5/10

It's 2038 the planet earth is out of national resources, but there's a whole asteroid belt of deserted, lifeless rocks from which all the world's resources can be drawn. But the planet earth has also split into various corporations instead of nations who are fighting for control of those asteroids. In fact one company is down to only one asteroid, the last stand will be made on Moon 44.You know if you're expecting a serious study on earth's dwindling resources and what I personally think will eventually happen, the strip mining of dead worlds for resources, Moon 44 ain't the film for you. What we did get in between the giggles and the video game special effects was one of the great homo-erotic science fiction films of all time.The defense craft are these helicopter type ships that only crazy people like prisoners will fly in exchange for commutation of sentence. They are navigated from the asteroid by these computer geek types. Pilot and navigator of necessity have to work together to fly these things. But the brawny prisoners and they are all brawny believe me have other ideas about bonding with these twinks from space.Michael Pare is an internal affairs agent for the company going in undercover as a prisoner. Dean Devlin is the head twink, you don't really think he would be teamed with a hardened lifer did you?Actors trained in the classics like Roscoe Lee Browne and Malcolm McDowell do the lines like they pearls from the Bard and they do it well. Might be some of the best acting these two gentlemen have ever done on screen. We never see these villains, all we know is that they're not aliens just greedier humans than who Pare is working for. Or who is exactly working for who?If you care to watch and get a few laughs, tune this monstrosity in.