So much average

A lot of fun.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Hur duh. This movie is stupid because we obviously landed on the moon. That's why it is garbage, not because I can't differentiate reality from fiction.1/10: we did land on the moon and if you like this film then you are stupid.

This film is exactly what I thought of the moon landing when I saw it on TV while at camp on the dining room TV.I thought it was a hoax and still do for there were no surprises.I was also once in a very primitive television studio at university.I was amazed how reality can be changed with unsophisticated equipment.

Many of us would have debated on either side of whether the man has ever set foot on Moon? Was the footage featuring Neil Armstrong and Co. staged? Was Stanley Kubrick who has just directed a near perfect space adventure involved in anyway? Was CIA involved? 'Operation Avalance' tries to answer exactly that using the found footage style of presentation that feeds on to the conspiracy theories surrounding this event.In the height of cold war and amidst the space race between USA and USSR, Russians are winning by sending a man to space through their Vostok program. John F. Kennedy made a promise to people that they will put a man on the moon by the turn of the decade. There is immense pressure on NASA to deliver. At the same time there is paranoia that Russia could have a mole within NASA to both steal the technology as well as know the latest status of their space program. Matt Johnson and Owen Williams are enthusiastic CIA agents who talk themselves into infiltrating NASA as documentary film makers to identify the Russian mole. During the process they learn that NASA doesn't have the technology to put a man on the Moon and bring them back safely. They come up with another outlandish suggestion to stage the event as an alternative workaround and even get it authorized. How this mission affects their lives, their friendship in a desperation to keep this a secret and inability to trust anyone else and a possibility that their lives could be in danger forms the rest of narrative.Though most part of the movie has an upbeat tone, there is one word that keeps popping in your head throughout - unconvincing. This movie is more of a fantasy that is built on top of the existing conspiracy theories and tries to justify how some of the discrepancies would have come into existence. Acting is natural and since this is all presented as a found footage, thankfully there isn't much scope for melodramatics. The cinematography is as if viewed through a camera from that era (doesn't make sense again since most of the documentaries at that time are done in b/w and this movie presents it in color). This is more of a geek's fantasy to have a closure on one of the most popular conspiracy theories of the past century but I look at it as an opportunity wasted. It neither goes in a comedy route nor as a serious version of the events and just ends up flip-flopping. The screenplay is repetitive and keeps circling back to the same place making it redundant and boring at times. The fact that CIA allows a rookie CIA agent to be at the helm of creating such a staged footage out in the open (even within the watchful eyes) already sounds ridiculous. And allowing to film the filming of this staged event is beyond ridiculous.Unconvincing take on a popular conspiracy theory with an undecided tone. Opportunity wasted!!

Good story telling, good story. 60's style (coloring etc), "amateur camera leading" (smoother than Blairwitch Project). For those who use "conpiracy theory", please do some research on: "Operation Ajax" Iran 1953 "Jacobo Árbenz" Guatemala 1954 "Kennedy assassination" USA 1963 "The Gulf of Tonkin incident" Vietnam 1964 "Salvador Allende" Chile 1973... "Olof Palme" Sweden 1986 "Nayirah (testimony)" / "Hill & Knowlton" Kuwait/USA 1990 "Wesley Clark" about "7 Countries in 5 Years" 20. Sept. 2001 USA/Pentagon "Rationale for the Iraq War" USA/Iraq 2002 (little bottle of milk in Gen. Powell's hand, CIS-Satellite-Photos of "Chemical Warfare Industrie") "Lybian Spring/Uprising" 2011 (faked news about uprising in the south of Tripoli) "The Change in Uraine" 2013 (by CIA Snipers), "Fuck the EU", "Jaz is our guy", "We spent 5 Billion $" (Victoria Nuland)After 1945, USA made over 128 "System-Changes" worldwide by Coup d'état or War. (read about "Operation GLADIO" Italy)