Set in 1959 and '60, in Bucharest, Romania. and based on a true story, this film focuses on the plight of the group that was to become known as the Rosenthal Gang. The group led by Max Radoiu Rosenthal (Mark Strong) were all once daring Jewish Resistance fighters vs. the Nazis during WWII, in Romania. They were all Communists as well, and when the Soviet Union seized complete control over Eastern Europe after the war, many of these Resistance fighters held elite positions in Romania.

However now over a decade later, many of the fighters are being blacklisted and purged from the country's hierarchy. As the film opens, the so-called Rosenthal gang is staging a daring daylight robbery of a bank transport van carrying loads of cash. They're using the pretense of making a movie as the heist progresses, in the middle of Martyrs' Square in Bucharest. Of course, this type of crime is unheard of in a Communist country.

Flash forward a year, and we find the group has all been captured, tried, and sentenced to death by a firing squad for their crimes. However, before their executions can take place, the government wants to recreate their story in a propaganda film, that will serve as a lesson for the Romanian people.

The movie, written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Nae Caranfil, is presented in a most irreverent and satirical way, which unfortunately only at times came across as entertaining to me. Towards the end of the film, as we finally learn the motivations of the "gang", it made little sense to me considering the dire consequences of what their actions could bring.

Overall, I know this movie is presented in a most satirical way, but it had me "scratching my head" half of the time, specifically as to the path the main characters chose to take here.

Although Closer To The Moon is based on true events some scenes in the movie just seem not very plausible. Those scenes, that are quite unbelievable and make no sense at all, made this movie lesser good than it should have been. I really doubt the 'gangsters' were that happy in those times. In the end credits you see the actual footage of their propaganda movie and nobody seemed happy there, much more realistic than the whole movie is trying to show. The cast is really top, all actors did a good job with their respective characters, so that was the best thing about this movie and that was what makes it worth watching. Plus the excellent directing from Nae Caranfil, not so much for his writing though. Closer To The Moon isn't bad for a one time viewing.

You've probably never heard of the Ioanid Gang, or the bank robbery that they carried out in Bucharest in 1959. I had never heard of it before I watched Nae Caranfil's "Closer to the Moon". The movie isn't any kind of masterpiece, but sufficiently looks at this incident, and how Romania's Soviet-backed government arrested the gang and forced them to star in a propaganda film reenacting the robbery.

One of the thing that we notice while watching the movie is the hypocrisy of the Eastern Bloc governments. They claimed that they were establishing classless societies but there was a high society (and the people in the government had no qualms about themselves jewelry). Later on, Nicolae Ceaușescu forced women to have as many children as possible, which overfilled Romania's orphanages. Most of the heads of state in the Eastern Bloc were typical ideologues, but Ceaușescu sounded like a mental case.

Anyway, the movie's worth seeing.