Sometimes, I take too much time hunting for a film.  After seeing so many movies, I can tell a lot about a title simply by looking at a thumbnail.  This is a candid admission.  I am, in effect, judging a book by its cover, cinematically speaking.  This is not how God wants us to view the world.  In 1 Samuel 16:7, the prophet who gave his name to that book says, “God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance.”  To give myself some grace, Hollywood tries to make its offerings fit into specific categories or genres.  There are some commonalities with these groupings, and today’s selection, Prospect (2018), bears many of the themes one would expect in a science fiction flick.  To get back to my original point, when choosing what to watch, it has become more about what kind of story I want to view.  I was decently pleased with my pick.

It does not look like Cee (Sophie Thatcher) is pleased with anything as we open Prospect.  As the title might suggest, her and her father, Damon (Jay Duplass), are miners.  Because this is science fiction, it is set in some undefined future and distant part of space.  What has her down is the fact that she is far from home and that her mother (not pictured) has passed away at some point.  She wants to return to where they are from, but he is in favor in pushing on to their next dig site.  He is not in the best frame of mind either, medicating his melancholy with some kind of substance that is applied with an eye dropper.  The following day, it is time for them to embark from their mother ship and land on the moon they have been orbiting.  However, as they are landing their rickety craft, sparks fly and they touch down a distance from their intended target.  All the same, they don their environmental suits since the planet’s atmosphere is unbreathable, and set off on foot to their destination.  Along the way, they notice evidence of other prospectors next to a spot with a small deposit of the living gems they seek.  As he goes through the delicate process of extracting the valuable gem inside, he explains how much a single one of these items is worth.  To her, this first find is enough to pay their debts and get back to where they left.  Damon will not listen.  He next reveals what is waiting for them at their goal.  The good news is that there is a mother lode of jewels that will set them up for life.  The bad news is that it is being watching by a small cadre of mercenaries.  Things are soon to go from bad to worse.  While Cee is getting water, two men walk up on Damon with apparent ill intentions.  Using the radio to communicate with Cee, he tells her to wait while Damon draws them away.  The leader of the newcomers, Ezra (Pedro Pascal), is talked into a hypothetical team up in order to take down the mercenaries and claim the riches for their own.  With Cee shadowing them, Damon waits for the right moment to turn the tables.  With his daughter keeping a rifle pointed at them, he goes through their stuff and finds a cache of valuable stones.  However, as Damon is counting his newfound wealth, Ezra’s partner jumps into action.  Damon is killed and Cee flees back to their battered lander.  Her first instinct is to try to escape in it, but it is still too damaged to rise.  With her food and water supply dwindling, eventually Ezra finds his way to the ship.  Before any more violence can be done, she shoots him in the arm.  Yet, he manages to convince her that, in order to get off the planet, she is going to need his help.  As such, he comes up with an alternate plan: he poses as the prospector the mercenaries are expecting and they split the money between them.  Seeing little alternative, she goes along with the suggestion, though with a gun pointed at his back.  As they are walking through the woods, they encounter a group of people how have seemingly settled on the moon.  Because Ezra’s wound is not in good shape, he asks them for help, but they hide their weapons first.  Inside the locals’ tent, their leader, Oruf (Andre Royo), hands Ezra a load of gems.  There is a price for these valuables: Ezra is to give Cee to them.  Instead, she runs out of the enclosure and wanders the woods until she finds a new encampment.  Inside, she finds Ezra still suffering from his wound.  He asks for her assistance, which involves amputating his arm.  Yet, the cutting does not commence until she gets assurances that he did not intend to sell her.  Once he is treated, they resume their journey to the mercenary encampment.  Once there, they are met with some hostility, particularly when there is a disagreement as to whether the armed men can bring the miners with them when they depart.  Once that matter is settled, Cee and Ezra get to work.  Yet, with the loss of one of his arms, Ezra is unable to extract the gems.  Eventually, the captain of the guard, so to speak, Mikken (Anwan Glover), notices his struggles and is about to kill Cee and Ezra.  Instead, Ezra acts first and takes down Mikken.  The others soon investigate, but Cee creates a diversion for her and Ezra to escape.  In the chaos, Ezra is wounded and tells Cee to leave without him.  Instead, she finds a medical kit to treat him, and they are able to take off together.

It is interesting that Cee and Ezra would be side-by-side as they leave the planet at the end of Prospect.  After all, he did kill her father, a fact she reminds him of more than a few times.  What is good about the relationship between the two main characters is that it seems to be based on forgiveness.  How many of us could forgive the person who had so recently murdered our father?  Or had shot us in the arm?  Nonetheless, this is exactly what God asks us to do.  There are plenty of moments throughout Christian history of this happening, especially in the Catholic Church.  One could look at St. Maria Goretti, who died as a result of being sexually assaulted, and on her deathbed expressed desire that her attacker be with her in Heaven.  That young man, Alessandro Serenelli, was at her canonization, along with her mother.  There are more recent examples.  In 1981, Mehmet Ali Ağca made an assassination attempt on St. Pope John Paul the Great.  Mehmet was arrest and visited in prison by then Pope John Paul II in 1983.  At the prelate’s request, in 2000 Mehmet was pardoned and returned to Turkey.  Clearly, forgiveness can have a powerful effect on people.  We see it with these real-life instances, and it is evident in the film.  Granted, there are ulterior motives.  They discover that they need one another more so than they initially thought, so there is some quid pro quo involved.  That is not how God’s mercy works, but it does underscore how interconnected we are to our fellows.  Such a realization has the possibility to make the world a better place.

That Cee and Ezra get along better as Prospect goes along certainly made the film better.  It gave me characters to care about, and that is always key for me enjoying a movie.  If you are used to a faster-paced story, then you might have difficulty with this one, but it worked for me.