Review of Operation Avalanche (2016) by Rameshwar I — 12 Mar 2017

Many of us would have debated on either side of whether the man has ever set foot on Moon? Was the footage featuring Neil Armstrong and Co. staged? Was Stanley Kubrick who has just directed a near perfect space adventure involved in anyway? Was CIA involved? 'Operation Avalance' tries to answer exactly that using the found footage style of presentation that feeds on to the conspiracy theories surrounding this event.

In the height of cold war and amidst the space race between USA and USSR, Russians are winning by sending a man to space through their Vostok program. John F. Kennedy made a promise to people that they will put a man on the moon by the turn of the decade. There is immense pressure on NASA to deliver. At the same time there is paranoia that Russia could have a mole within NASA to both steal the technology as well as know the latest status of their space program.

Matt Johnson and Owen Williams are enthusiastic CIA agents who talk themselves into infiltrating NASA as documentary film makers to identify the Russian mole. During the process they learn that NASA doesn't have the technology to put a man on the Moon and bring them back safely. They come up with another outlandish suggestion to stage the event as an alternative workaround and even get it authorized. How this mission affects their lives, their friendship in a desperation to keep this a secret and inability to trust anyone else and a possibility that their lives could be in danger forms the rest of narrative.

Though most part of the movie has an upbeat tone, there is one word that keeps popping in your head throughout - unconvincing. This movie is more of a fantasy that is built on top of the existing conspiracy theories and tries to justify how some of the discrepancies would have come into existence. Acting is natural and since this is all presented as a found footage, thankfully there isn't much scope for melodramatics. The cinematography is as if viewed through a camera from that era (doesn't make sense again since most of the documentaries at that time are done in b/w and this movie presents it in color).

This is more of a geek's fantasy to have a closure on one of the most popular conspiracy theories of the past century but I look at it as an opportunity wasted. It neither goes in a comedy route nor as a serious version of the events and just ends up flip-flopping. The screenplay is repetitive and keeps circling back to the same place making it redundant and boring at times. The fact that CIA allows a rookie CIA agent to be at the helm of creating such a staged footage out in the open (even within the watchful eyes) already sounds ridiculous. And allowing to film the filming of this staged event is beyond ridiculous.

Unconvincing take on a popular conspiracy theory with an undecided tone. Opportunity wasted!!