Val Kilmer. Carrie Ann Moss. What a load of toss...

Like a couple of years ago with "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," there's been a sudden rash of films about the first manned "Mission to Mars". Unlike before, when "Deep Impact"was the better picture but "Armageddon" garnered the box office, between "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet", there is no winner, commercially or critically.

Like "Mission to Mars," "Red Planet "tries to take a hard sci-fi edge,all realistically set out spacecraft designs and pretty effects. Despite this, "Red Planet" is eye-candy cheesy cornball sci-fi despite its hard sci-fi pretensions, and with a minimal ensemble cast which just invites the game of "who beamed down in the red shirt?" (ie who's gonna die first).

 It follows "Mission To Mars" almost exactly for the first act, even down to an almost identical calamity in orbit that forces the evacuation for the ship, and in doing so, again, one of the key cast members is offed in this sequence, once again the Mars base camp is wrecked beyond repair, once more they turn out not to be alone on Mars.

However, unlike "Mission To Mars" , in this film the majority of plot twists are obviously signposted about 5 minutes in advance, in a hamfisted and inept manner which anyone with longer than a 5 second memory can easily spot. Terence Stamp is criminally wasted in his role: Val Kilmer now takes his moniker in "Top Gun" ("Iceman") too literally when it comes to acting, trying to look as cool as Tyler Durden but being outacted by scenery, and Carrie Ann Moss ends up having to spend the majority of her screen time alone, emoting to a computer screen.

The effects are passable, occasionally pretty but seriously unimaginative, with the fire fx being particularly unconvincing. But when the best thing about the film is where everybody is outacted by a CGI robot (which is beautifully animated), and the Mars landing sequence is laughable for the wrong reasons (ever seen a beach ball as a spaceship?).

The already mentioned robot is animated like an actual person, with such precision and skill as to be outacting the entire of this film and the Phantom Menace, which look amateurish by comparison. However good effects do not a good movie make.

Ultimately, its B-movie schlock with a substandard plot, effects fluctuating between horrendous and excellent, a hamfisted plot, and a succession of coincidences that drive the plot forward that border on the unbelievable. "Pitch Black" is far superior, far cheaper Sci fi that looks more expensive and is more believable and effective. To describe this as anything more than competent is an overstatement; so wait for the channel 5 premiere, rather than killing braincells in the cinema.

All you get on the DVD is a trailer and 20 minutes of poorly transferred deleted scenes from an AVID editor, so these aren't a great incentive at all.....

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 1.0 beta 2!