'Operation Avalanche': Found-footage mockumentary imagines that the moon landing was faked

Operation Avalanche

offers a fun, if insubstantial, dose of historical trickery, directly taking on one of the most pervasive of 20th-century conspiracy theories: that NASA, with a healthy assist from Stanley Kubrick, faked the moon landing.

The movie is a technical marvel, a found-footage mockumentary that simulates 16mm and other period formats, effectively mimicking a covert mid-'60s piece while toying with the fourth wall by including scenes shot by filmmaker and star Matt Johnson at the real NASA, under the guise of a student documentary.

Of course, that means the behind-the-scenes movie about the making of Operation Avalanche conceivably could be as interesting as the movie itself. That's ordinarily a bad sign, but in this case, it only enhances the renegade appeal.

Johnson and Owen Williams play CIA agents assigned to NASA, in a bid to root out a Soviet mole, who wind up staging the Apollo 11 landing to save face for America in the Cold War space race.

The picture obsessively chronicles their efforts in a plausible reconstruction of how this fantasy might have played out. There's an elaborate explanation for how to overcome every conceivable obstacle, filled with details geared toward film buffs.

There aren't too many other movies that have featured a character excitedly extolling the virtues of Kubrick's revolutionary front-projection system, famous for achieving the photo-realism of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The characters and their relationships don't actually matter in the least, and the movie doesn't offer much in the way of genuinely compelling drama. It's an exercise in special effects and sleight of hand.

But the fact remains that in Operation Avalanche, Johnson has found a new way to approach one of the most frequently depicted historical events.

He has done so with an impeccable grasp of the tools at his disposal, crafting a movie that is ultimately about nothing more than the movies themselves, in all their misleading glory.

Operation Avalanche

*** (Out of four stars)

yDirected by Matt Johnson. With Johnson, Owen Williams, Josh Boles. Distributed by Lionsgate.

yRunning time: 1 hour, 34 mins.

yParent's guide: Rated R (language, including a brief sexual reference).

yPlaying at: Ritz Bourse.

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