Video: The Astronaut's Wife

Herald rating: ***

Running time: 110 mins

In stores: now

Review: Ewan McDonald

Johnny Depp (where's he been?) stars as Spencer Armacost (where do they get these names?), an American astronaut who's trapped outside the space shuttle with another crew member for two minutes after an explosion. Charlize Theron is his wife, Jillian, who waits on Earth for news. It turns out he's alive and after hospital treatment he's released with the other spaceman, Alex (Nick Cassavetes).

But Jillian finds he's changed. They've been happy living in Florida, where she's a schoolteacher, but he tells her he's become an executive for a New York aerospace firm. What happened out there in space? Depp, in a customarily good performance, keeps us guessing for most of this suspence tale, though the payoff ain't as good as it might have been.