The problem with high-concept films is that once you’ve ticked off the promises of the pitch, where do you go next? As Samuel L Jackson once so eloquently put it, “I have had it with these motherf***ing snakes on this motherf***ing plane!” Anyone brave enough to approach Finnish-German-Australian curio Iron Sky – essentially ‘Nazis On The Moon’ – will feel the same.
In an eye-catching introduction that looks like the cutaway scene from a computer game, director Timo Vuorensola sets out his film’s rather limited stall. American astronauts, bouncing across the shiny CGI-scapes of the moon, discover massive LOTR-style mines guarded by Luger-toting Nazis. “Houston, we have a problem!” someone should, but doesn’t, say.
The real problem, however, is that once the film has introduced its two main selling points – Nazis and the moon – it has nothing left to offer. The surviving astronaut (Christopher Kirby) is captured by a Nazi commander (Gotz Otto) but coveted by his mistress (Julia Dietze). You won’t need to be Albert Einstein (who cameos) to know where the trio is heading next. That’s right: Earth.
Playing out pedestrianly in New York City, the film soon becomes a lame invasion spoof, like Mars Attacks without the stars, or Austin Powers without the jokes. Kirby is a reductive Blaxploitation hero in all but decade, lines such as “Get your hands off me you Kristallnacht piece of s***!” are too knowing to be funny, and the film hasn’t the budget to match its dizzying concept, nor the wit to fill the gaps between.
