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Iron Sky poster

CAST
JULIA DIETZE
MICHAEL CULLEN
UDO KIER
CHRISTOPHER KIRBY
GOTZ OTTO
STEPHANIE PAUL
TILO PRUCKNER
PETA SERGEANT

ORIGINAL CONCEPT
JARMO PUSKALA

ORIGINAL STORY
JOHANNA SINISALO

SCREENPLAY BY
MICHAEL KALESNIKO

PRODUCED BY
OLIVER DAMIAN
TERO KAUKOMAA
CATHY OVERETT
MARK OVERETT
SAMULI TORSSONEN

DIRECTED BY
TIMO VUORENSOLA

GENRE
COMEDY
SCIENCE FICTION

RATED
AUS: M
UK: 15
USA: NA

RUNNING TIME
93 MIN

 

IRON SKY (2012)

A sci-fi spoof cum political satire, Iron Sky quickly losses whatever points its wacky premise awarded it with lazy puns aimed towards easy targets.

The further we are from the atrocities of World War II the more comfortable filmmakers are willing to use Nazi’s as subjects in their films. The Reader asked us to sympathise with a retired Auschwitz guard, Dead Snow featured Nazi zombies and Inglorious Basterds practically killed Hitler!

But how’s this for you: Nazi’s from space. Or more specifically from the moon, where in Timo Vuorensoloa’s much hyped Iron Sky the Nazi’s retreated after getting their asses handed to them in WWII.

It is on the moon where the film begins, with a political point scoring mission to the lunar planet by the yanks  uncovering a Nazi space base decades old in technology and even more entrenched in backwards political and social philosophy.

Convinced the American’s have sent a spy the Nazi’s launch their plan of re-global dominance with an invasion. The only thing that stands in their way is a disenfranchised Nazi (Julia Dietze), an African-American turned white model (Christopher Kirby) and the President of the United States (Stephanie Paul) who is everything Sarah Palin but name and has an agenda of her own.  

If the plot sounds silly, that is exactly the point. Iron Sky is a film that takes pride in its exploitative nature. It also thinks rather big of itself as some sort of bastion of intelligent political commentary when all it does is take the same ol’ left leaning arguments while making fun of easy targets with jokes as lame as its political points.

It underwent a lot of effort in doing so, though. A co-Finnish/Australian production, Iron Sky impresses with its practical and visual effects that really feels like the conclusion of hard work and imagination.

But again, that little problem of poor scriptwriting rears its ugly head. It’s not enough that the wildly wacky premise of Iron Sky is let down by the type of lame humour saved for the likes of Scary Movie, but its political agenda is so transparent that only those that share the same anti-American worldview might get a kick out of it.

Balls, that core factor found in the best political satires, is what Iron Sky is lacking. Creating a movie with Nazi’s and Sarah Palin as the main villain is not only un-topical but it’s also lazy. The free western world has been under centre-left rule for years now. If Vuorensoloa has any conviction in his political commentary, that would be the target of this cinematic investigating.

Instead he opts for the easy targets. Couple that with lazy writing and worse performance, then you don’t only get a riskless satire but a rather bad one at that.

**
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