Review of Contact (1997) by Stuart K — 30 Apr 2014

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, his follow-up to Forrest Gump (1994), this was based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel of the same name, which was based on an abandoned screen treatment Sagan had worked on in the late 1970's.

Directors came and went, (some of which later sued over this film version), but it's a thoughtful and moving sci-fi drama. A thinking man's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Since she was a young girl Dr.

Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) has been exploring the universe for signs of extra-terrestrial life, although she has always found it hard to get funding for these. It all pays off when, just when White House Science Advisor David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) wants to stop funding, Ellie comes across a signal from deep space, pulsating a sequence of prime numbers.

Instantly, this gets the attention of National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods), the numbers are decoded to build a spacecraft. While people are skeptical of this, Christian Philisopher Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) is facinated by Arroways's research.

Zemeckis knows how to makes a technically brilliant piece of filmmaking, and Contact is no exception. Only little problem is this one is overlong, and it takes a while to get going, but once the characters get cracking with building the spacecraft, the film gets going, but we shouldn't have to wait.