Review: In the sluggish space psychodrama ‘Slingshot,’ no one can hear you snooze

In “Slingshot,” a space-travel thriller directed by Mikael Håfström, the title refers to a risky flight maneuver involving orbital mechanics. Astronauts journeying a billion and a half miles to one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, will need a whip-around gravity assist — the “slingshot” in question — from Jupiter’s orbital velocity in order to make it all the way. Why are they going to Titan? It’s the only other celestial body that has liquid on its surface, methane that they intend to harvest for clean energy to combat climate change on Earth.

But despite the seemingly action-oriented premise, this psychological character study starring Casey Affleck is a slog. The film isn’t about the slingshot or the methane gas — or even climate change — but about the challenges of the journey itself. In order to endure the years-long trip, the crew needs to “hibernate” in three-month-long chunks, their sleep aided by heavy doses of drugs, which cause disorientation and confusion every time they wake up to perform some task.

John (Affleck), an ambitious pilot who made it through a rigorous selection process for this dangerous mission, spends most of his time on board trying and failing to shake off dreamy visions of a former lover, Zoe (Emily Beecham), one of the designers of the cutting-edge spacecraft. Every time he goes to sleep, he dreams of Zoe rolling around in bedsheets, and every time he wakes up, he’s fighting through brain fog in order to discern what’s real and what’s not, or fighting with his colleagues about their orders.

The situation with his crewmates, Capt. Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and scientist Nash (Tomer Capone), becomes increasingly untenable as their mental health devolves over many taxing hibernation cycles. When the ship is mysteriously damaged, perhaps from structural stress, Franks is determined to finish the mission, while Nash wants to turn back. John is caught in the middle. Despite this central tension, “Slingshot” is an undeniably sleepy film, in which a groggy Affleck stumbles around a spaceship for most of the running time.

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As Nash sows the seeds of mutiny, Franks attempts to violently wrest back control, using both physical force and mental manipulation. Ultimately, it plays out a bit like “Gaslight” in space, with Fishburne playing Charles Boyer to Affleck’s Ingrid Bergman. Screenwriters R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker don’t bother digging into the available themes and instead throw twist after twist into the script just to keep things from getting too somnambulant.

The desire to know what’s real and what’s not sustains enough mild interest to keep us engaged, but the continual flashbacks to a syrupy and unconvincing romance, in which John and Zoe lie on the floor talking about moths, have a devastating effect on the momentum. The terrific Beecham is saddled with a dismal hairdo and an even more dismal role, her character simply an object of wan yearning for the drowsy John. Affleck seems lethargic even in flashback, and is entirely implausible as a hot-shot pilot in his late 30s. He sleepwalks through this film in more ways than one.

Håfström’s direction is equally sluggish. While there’s some pretty lighting in the hibernation pods, the creative choices made around John’s hallucinations are predictable and pat. There’s just simply nothing to hook into aside from Fishburne’s performance, which is the only captivating element of the film, and even that is derivative of his iconic Morpheus from “The Matrix.” Despite its many twists and turns, “Slingshot” shows no signs of life.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.