Red Planet Details

The second of 2000's Mars-based science-fiction adventures makes Brian De Palma's under-rated Mission to Mars look like 2001: a Space Odyssey. It's 2050, and a team that includes Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carrie-Anne Moss and a hammier-than-ever Terence Stamp is sent to investigate when long-range efforts to make Mars habitable run into problems. Vital equipment is damaged in a crash-landing and the survivors are forced to depend on one another to fend off man-eating alien bugs and their own malfunctioning exploration robot while surviving the inhospitable terrain. Director Antony Hoffman's feel-bad fantasy can't be faulted technically: it looks great, and features some nifty space gadgets and nice special effects. But the plot lacks dramatic drive and the supposedly realistic depiction of interplanetary travel is markedly unengaging. The spectres of other, far better, sci-fi epics haunt the whole misbegotten patchwork: Alien, Starship Troopers, Short Circuit — you name it, it's in here somewhere. Aside from the ever-cool Sizemore, none of the actors registers as anything more than easily expendable ciphers, and the whole damp squib ensures Mars won't be a Hollywood travel destination for many moons to come.

"...Arresting cinematography....The film is technically adroit. The spaceship and Martian surface have the true grit one imagines space travel a half-century from now might be like..."