Ryan Shoots First: Incoming

Trapped on a space station is always a great premise for an action movie. Something about the idea of complete isolation with the vacuum of space mere inches away creates drama and tension around any story. So take any premise, jail break, kidnapping, baby sitting and put it in that environment and it’s not to hard to create a compelling story.

In Incoming we see the story of a black site prison facility 250 miles above planet earth. This facility harbors the most notorious terrorists on earth guilty of multiple bombings including Big Ben, the Taj Mahal and other famous landmarks. This facility only houses a handful of prisoners all of which believe they are the only ones on the station while they are interrogated to try and give up the leader of their organization who is code named Alpha. Here they are tortured and mistreated by the sole person in charge of the automated systems and power hungry Brit named Kingsly played by Lukas Loughran. Of course over the years a combination of neglect, abuse of power and general laziness the system is broken. This causes our main characters to enter the story. Scott Adkins leads the film as a CIA agent tasked with checking in on the project. He is escorting a psychiatric doctor played by Michelle Lehane who has been sent by the coalition of governments to evaluate the mental state of the prisoners. Over the years the question of ethics and humane treatment of prisoners has caused some to question the need for the facility, this evaluation may mean the end of the program. Of course while the countries on earth may have forgotten how dangerous these prisoners can be the prisoners themselves have not.

After a series of circumstances the prisoners are freed and now the team along with their tug boat captain Bridges must fight to retake the station because as Adkins character Reiser says “We’ve all signed expendability contracts if this station falls kiss it goodbye” (or something like that). The best part is once the prisoners escape they are not even aware they are in Space. Imagine their surprise when they reach the bridge. It turns out the leader of the organization they have been searching for has been in their possession this whole time and he now is running the station. The film builds some general intrigue in the beginning and the reveal of who Alpha is, for a bit it seems maybe this prisoner could be innocent but it all kind of plays out how it typically does. It would have been nice to see them throw a curve ball. The cast all plays their roles to type, Bridges is the relaxed naive tugboat captain who now just doesn’t care, Stone is the doctor who just wants to help the tortured prisoners to the point it gets her into trouble, Kingsley plays the man behind the keyboard with a God complex who once he loses control loses everything and Reiser is the ex spec ops with a skill set and the calm demeanor to save the day.

The other thing shooting in space on a station allows you to do is make some pretty easy sets. The whole movie takes place on the station so no need to have multiple locations and cities but the sets of the station are well done and look weathered, similar to any TV series with space stations using a similar metal military aesthetic. As the opportunistic plan of the terrorists unfolds the race against the clock begins. I enjoyed the film but it suffers from many of the same issues for these kind of B movies, the premise is solid, the beginning and end are solid but they just drag in the middle struggling to hit that minimum length needed to be a feature film. It’s like it was written to be a 60 minute episode in a series as opposed to a 89 minute feature. After scenes of people sitting in hallways talking, the terrorists begin their end game things pick up. Adkins has a particularly good fight scene in a hallway on the station which hallway fight scenes are always good, just ask Daredevil. I very much enjoyed the lack of a love story, once you see the gleamy eyed doctor and stud agent in a near death situation you assume they will hook up. They actually pretty much hate each other by the end of this movie, a nice change of pace to the typical formula.

Incoming sputters and stalls a few times but when it is going it is a good time and a good combination of familiar tropes and some changes in the formula. It’s Die Hard on a Space Station… again.