Cosmic Sin: Movie Review

Cast: Bruce Willis, Perrey Reeves, Frank Grillo, Lana

Director: Edward Drake

Easily a contender for one of the worst films of 2021 (which is saying something given how few releases have been out due to Covid-19), Cosmic Sin takes its sci-fi premise and squanders it at every available opportunity.

It's the year 2524, four hundreds after humanity started colonising foreign planets in space. Retired disgracefully from the force after committing an act of genocide with a "Q-bomb", Bruce Willis' dour General James Ford is called back into action after a first contact goes awry.

Suddenly, mankind is under siege and on the brink of interstellar war....and the only way to end it is to strike first.

Despite some impressive production values and a look that's sleek and enticing (even if Bruce looks like he's raided his Armageddon space suit), Cosmic Sin falls squarely into the "should have been released on home video" category, thanks to some largely uninspiring dialogue, some cliched sequences and some less than stellar character development.

It helps little that this story adds nothing new to the guns and grunts space battle story we've seen time and time again. Add in the fact that Willis can barely register any kind of emotion on his face and in his delivery, and sequences on a foreign planet that simply look like they were shot in a nearby wood when the budget ran out, and Cosmic Sin truly begins to live up to the second part of its title.

While the start plays out like a space version of Call Of Duty: Zombies, and every cliched possession sequence is committed to the screen, Cosmic Sin does little to give its characters anything more than rote dialogue, formulaic intentions and a bit of chatting when the guns aren't being used. There's more plot in a video game first person shooter than there is here.

It's Willis that feels wasted here, with none of his charisma showing, and no sign that he's remotely engaged with anything which is happening. Reeves manages to inject some personality into proceedings, but fails to do much in the latter half. 

Ultimately Cosmic Sin looks like the kind of film that was rejected from scifi series Babylon 5, a space pilot for some kind of franchise that was all out at sea before it began, and a film that's risible from beginning to (mercifully quick) end.