Unfortunately The Cold Equations is a story that seems rather resistant to the idea of being turned into a feature-length film. For one the short story is a two person drama. For two it is set on a spaceship and going by the dictates of story (the story’s sole setting being a spaceship that has been stripped to absolute minimum in terms of weight and has no excess room), one would imagine that the sets would be cramped and exceedingly confined. Both of these are restrictions that seem rather contrary to the principles that film operates on, which tend to favour multiple people stories and reasonable room to move the camera around. But these constraints taken into account, The Cold Equations does a fair job of keeping to the essence of the story. The film does quite unnecessarily add some additional characters, although the main drama still focuses on the two people. And the shipboard sets are cinematically sizeable yet small enough not to be totally unbelievable for the story’s requirements. That said the story still does feel awkwardly padded – the other cast members present are not really needed and the film does have to manufacture extra crises, even a micro-romance, in order to spin the story out to feature length. The Cold Equations is really a story that is far more suited to being told at half-hour length with only two actors on a single set – indeed its length and economy of setting is ideal for the half-hour tv anthology episode.

Director Peter Geiger shoots the film with a low-key manneredness and the best moments come in the character exchanges – indeed the film could almost be considered a study in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of confrontation of death. The final ejection of Poppy Montgomery out the airlock is quite heart-rending, although the film oddly never chooses to show her being ejected or even Bill Campbell pushing the button. Bill Campbell gives a good serious performance.

If this had been all there was, The Cold Equations could have worked quite modestly. Unfortunately the film tacks an ending onto the story that completely wrecks it. The original story hinged on a dilemma where the pilot had to make a decision about keeping the girl alive or else ditching the mission that carried vitally needed medicines that would save the lives of colonists. It’s a story that demonstrates the brutal kinds of pragmatism that must sometimes be made for the greater good. But the film comes with an absurd twist – one where the medicine is revealed not to be a vitally needed vaccine at all but a drug that will allow the company to exploit miners in dangerous working conditions – shades of Outland (1981). Thus the story now goes from being about a pilot having to make merciless but necessary decisions for the greater good to a sentimental tragedy about an innocent being sacrificed for the sake of a corrupt corporation’s purposes. It is something that warps the shock brutality of the original ending to replace it with tub-beating against the evils of corporations. The last scene of the film with the guards wanting to refuse to take Bill Campbell away but he nobly allowing himself to be taken has a faux sentimentality that is completely laughable.