Review: 'Slingshot' is a space drama with a lot of good ideas but not enough of a story to pull them together

There are some intriguing ideas in the science-fiction drama “Slingshot” — about the emptiness of space and the loneliness of ambition — but too many of them are floating free, with nothing to which they can tether.

We meet John (Casey Affleck) as he awakes from drug-induced hibernation on a spaceship, the Galaxy One, journeying from Earth to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the only object in space, besides Earth, to have stable liquid on its surface. But it’s not water, but methane.

John is one of three crew members director Mikael Håfström (who made the Stephen King adaptation “1408”) has placed on this vessel, as it prepares to slingshot past Jupiter to make the trip to Titan. The others are Capt. Franks (Laurence Fishburne), the commander, and Nash (Tomer Capone), a navigator who’s increasingly paranoid about Franks’ unflinching support for the mission.

As tension increases between Franks and Nash, John finds he can’t completely trust what he’s seeing. He starts having flashbacks to before leaving Earth — involving Zoe (Emily Beecham), one of the designers of Galaxy One, with whom John hooked up back home. As the ship gets closer to Titan, John finds he has trouble trusting what Franks and Nash are saying, or knowing who’s actually on board.

Håfström and writers R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker create a claustrophobic little space opera — aside from those four actors, the only significant speaking role belongs to David Morrissey as the Mission Control leader back on Earth — that delves into the dangers of space travel, the side effects of hibernation drugs, the survival instincts of moths and the tug-of-war between love and ambition. The biggest struggle, as the Galaxy One zooms past Jupiter, comes from John trying to understand what’s real and what’s in his head.

Affleck gives a gripping performance, capturing John’s confrontation of his own weaknesses and his descent into possible madness in measured doses. He’s well matched by Fishburne, whose usual paternal presence masks something more menacing.

The script’s smart ideas don’t come together into a satisfying whole — particularly in the movie’s final scene, which presents two possible outcomes for John, and doesn’t give viewers enough to build empathy for or make sense of his final choice. In the end, “Slingshot” may make viewers feel whipsawed by the missed opportunity here.

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‘Slingshot’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 30, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and some violence/bloody images. Running time: 109 minutes.