Mission to Mars

Some couples dance, others go to Mars. It was the year of two Mars based movies, with the other being Red Planet, of Pitch Black and the chaotic history that produced the Supernova. Plenty of sci-fi around but sadly few decent offerings. Mission to Mars is a film you can see had good ideas on the page, some brainy and emotion based narrative threads. Effects work is OK for the era, while there's a very impressive cast put together to tell the story. Yet the script stinks to high heaven, the surprises are as absent as Martians are, while the steals from previous sci-fi movies grate on the nerves. The odd sequence has quality about it (dancing in space, woo-hoo, storm attack, yay), while the finale - all be it still a steal - is well constructed and further proof that someone somewhere had the kernel of a good story idea, but it's laborious trite and devoid of the basic film principals - to entertain and engage. So many things wrong here, so much so the names of all involved have been spared. Join this Mission to Mars at your own peril. 4/10

When a mission to explore the red planet goes wrong, stranding "Luke" (Don Cheadle) alone on this hostile world, his colleagues "Woody" (Tim Robbins), "Jim" (Gary Sinese), "Terri" (Connie Nielsen) and "Phil" (Jerry O'Connell) put huge pressure on their boss to let them take the spare rocket ship and head to the rescue. After a minimum of persuasion, off they go and are soon in sight of the planet and of an anomaly that is defying their instruments and their instincts. They land, discover their friend is alive and well and that there is a strange construction on the planet that needs investigating. Sense might dictate they go home and return to proceed in greater numbers but there's no taming the inquisitiveness of mankind and, well, the action starts to heat up. To be fair, this film looks very good and the use of visual effects and the spaceship interiors are complementary rather than overwhelming. The dialogue, well that's another story - it's pretty poor from start to finish and the plot itself is fairly derivative (and a bit repetitive, too). The acting is really only adequate, but Brian De Palma does manage to engender a sense of camaraderie amongst his astronauts and a workable sense of menace as the plot develops. Jeopardy? No, not really. Of course some of the crew are going to end up Martian toast and I found the science a little bit implausible as we advance. As a throw-away sci-fi adventure film this works fine and passes two hours effortlessly. If you are looking for anything more cerebral and/or original then perhaps not...

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John Chard

CinemaSerf