Operation Avalanche

Synopsis: In 1967 at the height of both the Cold War and the Space Race, the CIA comes to suspect there is a Soviet mole working inside NASA. Two up-and-coming agents, Matt and Owen (Matt Johnson and Owen Williams) who have just finished an investigation into the possibility that Stanley Kubrick is a spy, finagle their way into NASA as a documentary film crew in order to hunt down the leak. In the course of their operation they stumble upon evidence that NASA won’t be able to put a man on the moon within the end-of-the-decade timeframe set by JFK’s famous speech. Rather than see the Soviets beat them to the moon, Matt comes up with Operation Avalanche, a plan to create a fake television broadcast that will trick the public into believing that the Apollo 11 mission is a success. Under the watchful eye of their CIA handler, Josh (Josh Boles), Matt and Owen begin to create their fake footage, but when sinister operatives start following them, they begin to suspect that Josh and the CIA have other plans for their secret mission.

It’s in the gap between having a great idea and the realisation of that great idea that the disappointment in this film lies. It just doesn’t deliver on its potential and there’s a couple of reasons why this might be. The first is in the way the filmmakers have approached developing the project. After garnering a few awards and some positive reviews for their first ‘found-footage’ film, The Dirties (2013) the core of this team (Johnson, Williams and Boles) who like to blur the lines by taking on the roles of both cast and crew, started to develop a more narratively-driven project. The problem, though, is that whilst you can just about get away with untrained actors in a found-footage film a story that aspires to a bit more depth and range in its performances, (I’m thinking of Ben Affleck’s 2012 film, Argo) you really need actors who can rise to the challenge. With the best intentions in the world, this trio just doesn’t have the acting chops.

The second problem is that the tone of the film changes remarkably about two-thirds of the way in. The early part of the story feels like we’re meant to find the hapless ineptitude of Matt and Owen both endearing and funny; not laugh-out-loud funny, but wryly, knowingly funny. Then, suddenly things go very dark and the film attempts to shift gear into the thriller genre with a big car chase and some life-or-death situations thrust upon our heroes. The result is a bit of a muddle where the funny bits are not funny enough and the thrilling bits are not thrilling enough and the whole thing feels like it doesn’t really know what it wants to be.

What is entertaining are the details about how they actually go about making the fake film with late 60’s cinema technology. There’s a fair bit of slow motion camera work (for the moon’s gravity) and some carefully chosen moonscape locations and a nice looking model of the Lunar Lander. There’s also a bit of well chosen inter-cutting of new and archival footage (à la Forrest Gump) that allows Matt to appear to be speaking to the real head of NASA or walking through Apollo Mission Control. When they get the idea that they can glean what they need to know to make their fake moon landing film from the techniques that Stanley Kubrick is using on the set of  2001: A Space Odyssey their knowledge of Kubrick comes to the fore. It’s a smart idea, given that (if you’re on the lunatic fringe) it was allegedly Kubrick who faked the moon landing. The sequence with Matt and Owen on the lunar set at Shepherd’s Bush Studios where the characters are cut into real footage with Kubrick is possibly the film’s highlight. (It’s worth noting, though, that the idea of Kubrick faking the moon landing was cleverly and more successfully explored in William Karel’s 2002 mockumentary, Dark Side of the Moon).

It’s a pity that these ambitious young filmmakers didn’t make some stronger creative choices with this film or, at least, hire some actors who could carry it off. For me, I think I’ll stick with Peter Hyams’ faking of the Mars landing in his 1977 sci-fi thriller Capricorn One.

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