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Three Americans, three Russians and one exceedingly cramped office hovering 250 miles above Earth \u2014 what could possibly go wrong? Given the typical genre coordinates, the 95 minute running time and historic hostilities between Russia and the United States, the more relevant questions here are when and how quickly and entertainingly things will go kablooey in \u201cI.S.S.,\u201d an enjoyable, low-wattage thriller set on the International Space Station<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are nothing but bilateral hugs and smiles when the space newbie Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose) arrives on the station, having been shot into the story on a Russian Soyuz rocket. She and another American astronaut, a smiley family man, Christian (John Gallagher Jr.), have caught a ride to the station, where she\u2019ll be studying mice or \u201cmy little guys,\u201d as she cooingly calls them. Like a character\u2019s early reference to the station\u2019s life-support system (if it stops humming, uh-oh), these helpless creatures \u2014 soon seen floating tails-up in a container \u2014 are early warning signs that something will be disturbing the relative peace very soon.<\/p>\n The movie \u2014 written by Nick Shafir and directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite \u2014 flashes its wailing red alarms early and often. The space station itself \u2014 a cluttered warren with tangles of wires, claustrophobic chambers and eerily weightless bodies \u2014 makes a convincing pressure cooker. And Cowperthwaite, who\u2019s worked in nonfiction and fiction (she\u2019s best known for her doc \u201cBlackfish<\/a>\u201d), clearly maps the tight quarters straightaway, which adds to the ominous atmosphere. By the time a Russian colleague, Alexey (Pilou Asbaek), gruffly tells Kira that \u201cit does not end well,\u201d all this foreshadowing has certainly piqued expectations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What follows is consistently watchable and sometimes tense but, despite some twists, largely unsurprising. After the introductions \u2014 Chris Messina plays the third American, Gordon \u2014 and the assorted personalities and relationships have been sketched in, the movie gets down to genre business with some worrisome red-orange flashes on Earth. Communication failures ensue, as do the progressively more fretful faces and soundtrack music. The two crews close ranks, with the Americans retreating to one corner to sneak worried looks at the similarly alarmed Russians, who include Weronika (Masha Mashkova) and Nicholai (Costa Ronin).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As things go bad and then seriously bad, Cowperthwaite keeps the pieces efficiently shuffling to and fro. She plays with constricted spaces, adds surveillance imagery to amp the disquiet and routinely folds in shots of both outer space and of the orbiting station. This reminds you of the setting\u2019s exoticism and complements the slow-boiling sense of peril, including the obvious unease building in the characters\u2019 head space. (The cosmic imagery also reminds you of how routine persuasive digital special effects are now.) Even so, despite the far-out milieu, the unfolding drama could have easily been set in a submarine \u2014 or any other constrained place in which characters have been assembled to prove the best and worst about humanity.<\/p>\n DeBose, who\u2019s best known for her powerhouse turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story<\/a>,\u201d makes a convincing narrative axis. The performer\u2019s warmth and charisma nicely offset Kira\u2019s guardedness and outsider status, and that combination makes the character seem more complicated than the bit of back story she\u2019s been given. It\u2019s clear from the get go, from all the close-ups and hovering camerawork, that Kira is the hero of this adventure. In the end, the biggest mystery here is precisely what type of space warrior \u2014 a Sigourney Weaver in \u201cAlien<\/a>\u201d or a Sandra Bullock in \u201cGravity<\/a>\u201d \u2014 she must become in order to get the job done.<\/p>\n I.S.S.<\/strong>
Rated R for violence. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n