Moon 44 (1990)

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writers: Dean Heyde, Oliver Eberle, Roland Emmerich, P.J. Mitchell

Composer: Joel Goldsmith

Starring: Michael Pare, Lisa Eichhorn, Dean Devlin, Brian Thompson, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Geoffreys, Leon Rippy, Jochen Nickel, Roscoe Lee Browne

More info: IMDb

Tagline: In the Outer Zone... you need a friend.

Plot: In 2038, Earth's mineral resources are drained, there are space fights for the last deposits on other planets and satellites. This is the situation when one of the bigger mining corporations has lost many mineral moons except one and many of their fully automatic mining robots are disappearing on their flight home. Since nobody else wants the job, they send prisoners as a last resort to defend the mining station. Among them, internal affairs agent Felix Stone, assigned to clear the whereabouts of the expensive robots. In an atmosphere of corruption, fear and hatred, Stone gets between the fronts of rivaling groups and locates the person committing sabotage.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

There are times when the direction, pacing, sets and special effects are impressive and even more so when you consider the low budget.  Joel Goldsmith's (son of Jerry) score is very good and is reminiscent of his pop's style to the point where you'd think Jerry did it.  The problem with the film is that it drags a lot in the second half.  Between the training missions and the ship battles, there's a lot of repetition in the shots and none of them are exciting to begin with.  It helps having Malcolm McDowell and  Stephen Geoffreys but it's not enough to sustain 100 minutes.  And that's another problem in that it's too long.  There's enough good in this to satisfy any 30 year old direct to video sci-fi itch you've been having but lower your expectations.