Moonwalkers (2016)
Directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet

Film Synopsis

20th July 1969 is a day that will live in history - the day that man first set foot on the lunar surface.  It is such an important milestone in human history that it cannot be allowed not to happen.  If the Apollo 11 mission were to fail, this will be a humiliating defeat for the United States, a country obsessed with asserting its supremacy over the Soviet Union.  Come what may, the moonwalk must be seen to happen, regardless of whether it actually does so.  To this end, the CIA sends one of its best agents, Tom Kidman, to England to recruit Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, into filming a faked lunar landing in the studio.  This way, no one will ever know whether the Apollo 11 mission was a success or not.  Naturally, everyone involved in the making of the bogus film - including Kubrick - will have to be disposed of afterwards, but this is the kind of thing that the CIA excels at.

With a briefcase full of cash, Kidman sets out for London and is soon in conversation with a man he believes to be the director's agent, although he is in fact the manager of a failed hippie rock band, Jonny.  Desperate to earn some cash to pay off a psychotic East End gangster he is in debt to, Jonny promises to arrange a meeting with Kubrick, but the man he introduces as the director is in fact his roommate Leon.  When Kidman realises he has been duped, after handing over the bribe, Jonny agrees to help him out by getting another hippie friend of his, Renatus, to film the faked moon landing in the privacy of his grand house.

Fearing what his CIA paymasters may do to him if they ever get wind of his mishaps, Kidman agrees to go along with the suggestion.  Unfortunately, Renatus regards himself as something of a hip auteur, so the proposed film becomes a trip of an altogether different kind to the one intended, with the help of some powerful hallucinogenic drugs. Just as the project appears doomed, the CIA turns up in force and takes charge of the proceedings.  As Jonny and Leon bounce around a fairly convincing mock-up of the lunar surface, the CIA agents are caught in a violent shoot-out with Jonny's gangland enemies...