A sci-fi film with a social conscience

By Nicola Sum

We are living in a time of protest. A level of activism, essential to our sense of community, continues to play out around the world. What of colonization? What of intention? Too much drama? Welcome to the grand scale of Cosmic Sin; a sci-fi meets social conscience film, filmed in 2020 against the backdrop of the global pandemic.

Director, Edward Drake, explores ideas of civilizations, cultures and erasures through a human versus aliens scenario. In 2524, mining companies claim planets, a global alliance looks for first contact (FC incidents) and back on earth we still drive SUVs on motorways. Sorry!

An FC incident on a faraway planet leads General Ryle (Frank Grillo) to gather his specialist team, headed by Ford (Bruce Willis), Goss (Perrey Reeves) and Tieve (Costas Mandylor). As the team engage the FC survivors, it becomes apparent that the aliens have plans for an invasion. Goss quotes her own thesis, “To kill a culture is to kill the very idea of creation. It is a sin against the cosmos”. Ergo- operation Cosmic Sin is launched, or as Ford puts it “Better them than us”.

The storyline is a mix of some poetic scripting, some intimate chatter across the main characters, and many scientific references to all things quantum – displacement, bomb, leap and so forth. Much kitting out later (courtesy of Hex Morris for his Icarus suits), and with some cool special effects (supervised by Ian Duncan), the rogue team go to war on the remote planet. The rest is for watching with a warning from the parasitic aliens about erasure of our species.

Ford leads with the confidence of his past experience, while Braxton, played by Brandon Thomas Lee, is the counter-balance of the promising young soldier. There are moments of mood shifting humour in the character of Dash (Corey Large, who also co-wrote this with Drake) and much serious-faced decision-making from Ryle.

Watch this for sci-fi entertainment. Watch it for the drama of war. Watch it because it is aiming to hold a mirror to our discourses of kingdoms, colonies and liberties. Not necessarily all in that order or that heavy a fashion, but the film is trying to say something, and it’s worth a listen.

In cinemas now.