Moon (2009, UK)

In director Duncan Jones' plot-twisting, dramatic thriller and sci-fi film (with obvious filmic references to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), and others) - it was set on the far side of the Moon.

Hints of its discovery of identity theme were found in its two taglines: "250,000 miles from home, the hardest thing to face...is yourself" and "The last place you'd ever expect to find yourself."

• the film opened with a voice-over from lone, bearded, long-haired astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a sole employee who was at the end of a three-year contract. He was supervising the strip-mining of lunar rock (with gigantic robotic threshing or harvesting robotic machines) to obtain Helium-3, a major component of fusion technology for green solar fuel energy, that was then periodically sent back to Earth:
• Sam's voice-over: "There was a time when energy was a dirty word. When turning on your lights was a hard choice. Cities in brownout. Food shortages. Cars burning fuel to run. But that was the past. Where are we now? How do we make the world so much better? Make deserts bloom? Right now, we're the largest producer of fusion energy in the world. The energy of the sun, trapped in rock, harvested by machine from the far side of the moon. Today, we deliver enough clean-burning helium-3 to supply the energy needs of nearly 70% of the planet. Who'd have thought? All the energy we ever needed, right above our heads. The power of the moon. The power of our future."
• he was located on the far side of the Moon at a mining base named 'Sarang,' and working for a Japanese consortium titled LUNAR Industries, Ltd.
• communications with Earth were reduced to only video-taped recordings, and Sam was beginning to show signs of stress and homesickness: ("I'm talking to myself on a regular basis. Time to go home, you know what I mean?"). He missed his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott) and his young 3-year old daughter Eve (she was an infant when he started his contract), and was only able to speak to them through delayed video messages. He was also experiencing hallucinations and dreams of making love to his wife
• Sam's only contact and companion was a semi-mobile, multi-tasking AI robotic assist machine named GERTY 3000 (voice of Kevin Spacey) with a robotic arm. The questionably-helpful, smooth-voiced, programmed GERTY used yellow smiley face emoticons to communicate emotions and monitored Sam's every move
• the film took a turn when he suffered an accident, while he was out in a rover repairing a malfunctioning harvesting mining machine named Matthew. He distractedly crashed his rover into the thresher after seeing an hallucinatory mirage of a figure in the distance
• after a dissolve to black (the loss of consciousness), Sam awoke in the infirmary where GERTY told him that he had experienced an accident that he couldn't remember; shortly later, the injured Sam struggled off the infirmary bed and overheard GERTY having a strange and clandestine conversation with Thompson (Benedict Wong) at HQ: "(The new Sam is in) good working order. But we only have two working harvesters now"
• after convincing GERTY that he had to check the exterior shell of the base - after sabotaging it himself with a minor gas leak, Sam evaded GERTY and left the base. He took another rover to the earlier rover crash site, where he made a remarkable discovery. He found an unconscious version of himself (doppelganger) in the damaged rover. He brought his doppelganger back to the base, and then yelled at GERTY: "Who is he?...You tell me who that is!"
• the disoriented, injured and tired Sam was placed in the infirmary, and told there had been an accident - while a 'cloned' Sam 2 (Robin Chalk), the doppelganger - a younger, mirror-image, healthier clone, looked on from a distance
• GERTY demanded that the younger Sam repeatedly take memory tests, claiming he had experienced slight brain damage in the accident, and he needed to strengthen his logic skills; Sam was ordered to remain at the base by LUNAR's Overmeyers (Matt Berry), who also promised that they would send a "rescue unit" to tend to the stalled harvester
• Sam listened to another message from Tess, telling him that Thompson was "promising the world - I think it was the right thing, but it's just such a long time." Sam angrily asked GERTY about the other 'Sam Bell': "What the hell's going on?...I'm losing my mind." GERTY asserted that LUNAR had not been told that he had been rescued alive from the rover. The two Sams each thought the other was an inferior clone: ("We look like each other").
• the company sent a message that it had secured a Rescue Unit (a three-man crew) named ELIZA, to arrive in approximately 14 hours; it had purportedly been sent to "fix" the stalled Harvester, but the clone suspected that Sam's promised contract to return to Earth in a few days wouldn't be honored. A frustrated Sam yelled at the clone: "I'm the original Sam. I'm Sam f--king Bell."
• the plot became even more complex when it was theorized that neither of the two Sams was an 'original'; the clone was suspicious that the company had a secret supply room of replacement clones inside the base: "What about the other clones?...We might not be the first two to be woken up...There might be others up here right now...I bet there's some kind of secret room...You really think they give a s--t about us? They're laughing all the way to the bank."
• the two engaged in a bloody struggle when the younger Sam insisted on tearing the base apart to find the hidden room
• Sam confessed to GERTY that he had anger issues, which had caused his wife Tess to leave him for 6 months, after which she gave him a "second chance." When Sam directly asked GERTY: "Am I really a clone?" - he was given a clear explanation, only hinted at in GERTY's message earlier. The fraudulent Japanese consortium (LUNAR Industries) that was running the operation was cloning replacement Sams inside the base station, to avoid paying for new astronauts
• GERTY described how it had awakened or activated the new clone after the rover crash and implanted the memories of Sam Bell into the clone; the injured Sam in the rover had been replaced with a new cloned version of himself (aka Sam 2)
• actually, the film's major spoiler was that both of them were clones of the first "Original Sam" who had long ago returned to Earth, as GERTY explained to the older Sam: "When you first arrived at Sarang, there was a small crash. You woke up in the infirmary. You suffered minor brain damage and memory loss. I kept you under observation and ran some tests....Sam, there was no crash. You were being awakened. It is standard procedure for all new clones to be given tests to establish mental stability and general physical health. Genetic abnormalities and minor duplication errors in the DNA can have considerable impact...(Tess and Eve) they are memory implants, Sam. Uploaded, edited memories of the original Sam Bell. I am very sorry."
• Sam 2 told the elder Sam that there was a conspiracy, and that they would be in a deadly, problematic predicament once the 'rescue team' arrived: "I wasn't supposed to find you...They don't want us to be able to contact Earth. They lied to us."
• the two Sams decided to join together to search the base, and drove two rovers outside the working perimeter of the base. There, they discovered that live long-range communications to Earth were deliberately being jammed by transmitting antennas. The elder Sam was also beginning to physically deteriorate after three years of service, and was throwing up blood and losing teeth. He played back archival video of the four previous Sams (all physically debilitated as their 3-year contracts expired), as they prepared to take a three-day return journey back to Earth in a cyrogenic protection pod (although they were actually euthanized and incinerated); in reality, cloned Sam 2 was actually Sam 6!
• the two 'clones' found a secret, out-of-bounds level of vaults below the hibernation chamber, where there were hundreds of ready-to-use cloned Sams stored in 'cryosleep' pull-out drawers: "Jesus Christ, there's so many of 'em."
• beyond the perimeter in a rover, the older Sam called Tess but instead reached daughter Eve (Kaya Scodelario), now 15 years old, who told him that Tess had "passed away some years ago"; stunned, he hung up before her father (the "Original Sam") was called to the video screen
• in only seven hours, the ELIZA 'rescue unit' would arrive, and the two Sams knew that if they were found together, they would be eliminated. They decided on a plan of action in a race against time, to seek a way to return to Earth in a Helium-3 transport, and expose LUNAR's conspiracy; GERTY was told to wake up a new 7th clone (there had been 4 previous clones before the two of them), in time to greet ELIZA
• because Sam was sick and deteriorating, he was driven back to the crashed rover to expire there, to prevent suspicion, while the newer cloned Sam was sent back to Earth
• GERTY's memory cache, in its memory banks, that had recorded everything in the previous day, was rebooted after younger cloned Sam 2 was launched to Earth
• a harvester was programmed to crash into the jamming antenna to activate Live-Feed communications with Earth; the ELIZA arrived just as the younger cloned Sam was launched, and the new 7th clone awoke
• just before the closing credits as the launcher entered Earth's atmosphere, news reports (in voice-over) were broadcast about the controversy stirred up by Sam's (clone 6) testimony and evidence back on Earth, alerting the public to LUNAR's unethical practices: "Lunar Industries stocks have slipped a further 32% after accusations. Clone 6, the clone of Sam Bell, has been giving evidence at CAA's Board of Directors meeting in Seattle...."
• the voice of a radio talk show host was heard next, casting doubt on the clone's believability: "You know what? He's one of two things. He's a wacko or an illegal immigrant. Either way, they need to lock him up. Line two"