In the future, Damon and his teenage daughter Cee are in a space station, orbiting an alien planet. They are prospectors and descend in a lander to the forest of the planet, with space suits, in order to extract gems from oysters hiding in the ground. Two other prospectors approach, Ezra and his friend, and try to rob him. Cee ambushes them from behind, and in the shootout, Ezra's friend and Damon are killed. Cee rushes to the lander, but cannot start it. Ezra enters, Cee wounds him in the arm, and they decide to cooperate to get away from the planet. They approach human settlers living in a hut, but these want Cee to stay with them, so she flees. Ezra reunites with Cee, and she has to perform an amputation on his arm due to an infection. They approach mercenaries and ask them for a lift to the space station. In a shootout, Cee and the wounded Ezra board the ship of the mercenaries, returning to orbit.
"Prospect" is an intruiging independent science-fiction flick, proving that even independent studios can produce good films in such a genre where big budgets are expected. The movie is a blend of Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and Petersen's "Enemy Mine"—the first half tackles the theme of greed and its consequences which just cause unnecessary detriment, whereas the other half explores the theme of two disparate people forced to cooperate to escape from an isolated place, in this case Cee and the dubious Ezra. While the science-fiction setting starts off with a bang, creating a feeling of awe, once the viewers get use to it, the storyline becomes rather stale and traditional, without a higher amplitude of events which would sustain the initial attention. While "Prospect" has suspense, it does not offer more ingenuity neither in style, writing, creativity or characters—the latter are especially banal at times, and only thanks to Sophie Thatcher's great performance as Cee does the characterization feel better at times. The only two sequences where Cee is "twitched" out of this grey depiction is in the opening sequence where she listens to Rock 'n roll music on her headphones while the gas planet is seen in the background of the space station, and in the sequence where she tells Ezra how she read a novel and liked it so much she even made up additional chapters in it, in order to enjoy more in these adventures. The directing is tight and effective, yet one does feel the resolution and the ending lacked just a little bit more of a versatile touch, since they feel somewhat standard.
Grade:++
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