Rating: 
Summary: May be too simple and monochromatic for most SF fans.
Review: 15 years from now, people are going to pick up this movie and wonder why so many people thought it was bad--there's actually very little wrong with it: memorable performances from Sizemore, Stamp and Kilmer, better science than the average Hollywood flick, a nifty mystery, a logical triumph of man over machine (aren't we all a little tired of omnipotent, indestructible robots?), and crisp suspense as the astronauts race the clock to escape the tightening noose of a mission gone awry.It was promoted as a SF/Horror flick similar to ALIEN, and it really isn't--it's more like Alfred Hitchcock directing THE RIGHT STUFF. All the SF movie fans I know tend to like byzantine tales, historic in scope, filled with quirky characters roaming rich new landscapes, so this simple tale of a small group of men trying to escape a desolate red planet within a short span of hours might not be rich enough for them. (The SF fanboys won't like it because Carrie-Anne Moss's shower scene is too short and doesn't show enough...er...Moss.) It's definitely worth a rental, but you won't want to own it unless you're a suspense fan that revels more in how a film is put together than in how it turns out.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent enough sci-fi flick is no 'Alien'
Review: Red Planet is planet Mars, the one that has so fueled our imaginations over the last century. Was there ever life on it? Did it die out due to climactic changes? If so, could life be reintroduced there? Could we colonize it? Could our ancestors have come from there eons ago? Sci-fi has pondered all of these questions and more, while real science has pondered some of them. As sci-fi, this movie succeeds more often than not. As entertainment, it does not succeed often enough. The time is fifty years into the future. Mankind has polluted Earth to the point that it will soon become uninhabitable. (Considering the head in the sand approach being taken by our current political leaders, this may not be so far fetched.) Unmanned space craft have been sent to the planet to introduce algae. This has successfully caused the production of oxygen, an absolute necessity if we are to colony Mars, but lately the algae has been inexplicably dying out. A team has been dispatched to find out why. The movie opens during the ship's six month voyage. Aboard are six scientists and technicians who, for the most part, get along reasonably well. The greatest tension is due to the fact that the commander is a woman. Kate Bowman [Carrie-Ann Moss] is not only competent and intelligent, she is also attractive. I liked the way these men and Katie are portrayed as professional enough to deal with this setup. I also liked the way it gave a bit of edge to the situation. All goes well until, just as they prepare to land on Mars, a solar storm hits and causes some horrific problems with the ship. Bowman must stay behind with the crippled ship while the five men attempt a landing using a small shuttle. They crash land and lose radio contact with the ship. When they reach site of the shelter, which was sent from Earth beforehand, they find it has been destroyed. The oxygen in their suits is limited. They have no food and water and are marooned in a very hostile place. What, if anything, exists on Mars that can save them? I did admire the way Red Planet tries to be reasonably accurate scientifically. I also admired its serious tone, although that may be part of its undoing. There are times when the crew's situation is so desolate that the movie becomes grim. Grim is never entertaining. I also didn't think the movie's answer as to why the algae disappeared was satisfactory. When this happens, it's like listening to a promising joke only to find the punch line is weak. The small cast is uniformly good. I especially liked Val Kilmer as Gallagher, a man who has to go all the way to Mars to realize what a wondrous place the universe really is. I also enjoyed his character's relationship with Bowman. As Bowman, Carrie-Ann Moss has the most difficult part because Bowman spends much of the movie alone on the ship. This does not allow Moss to show the acting dazzle she normally does. As a movie, Red Planet is not in the league of the great sci-fi epics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though it is certainly better than recent techo-trash entries like Sphere and Starship Troops.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad
Review: Not too bad of a movie. I like space flics anyway. Good special effects. Predictable ending.......
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps a bit too neat and simple, but at least not stupid.
Review: Once upon a time, space missions used to be manned with reliable personnel, real professionals who knew the details of their task to the "t". But then Arthur Clarke teamed up with Gentry Lee and wrote a sequel to "Rama", which showed everyone that it was a lot more fun to populate spaceships with bickering incompetents who had no reason to be up in space in the first place. Thus, essentially, the early scene where the crew are introduced in terms of their occupations and personality trait (singular - i.e., "Burchenal - one of the world's greatest bioengineers and his own greatest hero") is monumentally superfluous. We already know these people. We've read about them, seen them on TV. We know most of them are going to die. They really are that stupid. They raid the chemicals cabinet to make moonshine, prompting the line that will live on in infamy: "A billion dollars of taxpayer money on this mission and you're using the lab equipment as a still?" As if we didn't get it, there is a scene of the male crewmembers urinating on Mars (they are amused by the low gravity). The best aspect of "Red Planet" is its surprising tenacity. It faithfully follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, and is almost old-fashioned. For all intents and purposes it is hard science fiction, and does not feel any compunction to resort to either action comedy ("Armageddon") or over-the-top special effects ("Mission to Mars"), except for a silly, protracted scene of Bowman venting the ship of fire. The premise is not to save stranded comrades or anything that promises any inane action sequences. The mission's sole goal is to find out what happened to the terraforming algae. Moreover, "Red Planet" consistently generates momentum and wrings a measure of drama from this sparse and underwhelming plot. There is a touching scene where the crew almost run out of air and sit resignedly waiting to die, and a crash landing sequence that's as much movie as music video. Mars's surface is magnificent in its atmospheric reality, and the spaceship, Mars-1, seems to have come straight out of one of Clarke's novels, right down to Lucille, the computer voice that echoes the crew. Sadly, while a lot of good can be said about "Red Planet," it is by no means a masterpiece. It fits together so neatly it falls a bit flat. Toward the end the plot wears thin and the underlying cliches begin to show. In hindsight, the discovery that the entire plot depends on the berserk AMEE continually playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the crew is rather disappointing. And while the initial question of "where have the algal mats gone?" is answered, the explanation is even more baffling than the question. In the end, "Red Planet" is neither particularly memorable or exciting. Better human dramas and loftier science fiction have been filmed. "Red Planet" sets no benchmark, though it's still a solidly entertaining experience.
Rating:
Summary: A fun romp thru the science fiction world..
Review: I think this is a great movie. I like it simply because it lets me escape reality for a little over an hour and a half. See, I love movies, and I don't expect them all to be cinematic masterpieces. You gotta throw some [bad ones] in there too. This movie is by no means a great science fiction movie. It is, however, fun. What would happen if we were able to go to Mars? This is better than Mission to Mars, because this one deals with scientific situations more than theological. Granted, you do have Chantilas and his God theories, but thats about it. If you want a fun romp through the galaxy, see this.
Rating:
Summary: Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown
Review: That's what space janitor keeps singing to himself as he and his fellow astronauts walk through the deserts of Mars looking for a way to go back to their ship, that's still orbiting in outer space, up there... somwhere... Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker and Terence Stamp star as the crew of the Mars-1 mission, the first man mission to the red planet, set to land on february 5th, 2057. The mission? To find out what's going on with the atmosphere that scientists had been creating from Earth since the 2020s. The oxygen levels are dropping and nobody knows why. That's what this 6 guys are here to find out. Ok, so probably it's not one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, but this is film is absolutely beautiful. The music, the photography, the acting... all great. The story could have been better, but for some reason, all the other stuff is so great that you just can't judge the story. It's like watching a mysterious painting, or closing your eyes to listen some beautiful symphony... Surprisingly artistic, the script is no where near the quality of all the other elements of this film, and that's why one can feel this movie as a pretty empty excersice, or ending up feeling dissapointed. I won't discuss that, but the beauty and elegance of this piece is undeniable. But if you like simple sci-fi movies, maybe this can be a good choice, but warning, I do not recommend this film to everybody... my advice to you is rent the movie and watch it before buying it. At least you'll have a choice. What can I say? I, personally, love this one.
Rating:
Summary: Get yourself to Mars
Review: Val Kilmer plays Gallagher, the nuts and bolts man on the first manned mission to Mars in "Red Planet". With over-population and pollution threatening the future of the human race by the middle of the 21st century, NASA turns to Mars as a possible avenue for colonization. Before the mission reaches Mars, a temporary habitat is set up and lakes of algae are sprinkled across the surface with the hope of converting the Martian carbon-dioxide atmosphere into oxygen. Led by the ultra-competent Commander Bowman (Carrie Moss), and including a philospoher (Terrence Stamp), the hot-shot (Ben Bratt), the existentialist geneticist (Tom Sizemore) and a terra-former named Pettengill (Simon Baker) whose selfishness borders on paranoia. Among these loft types, Kilmer's unexciting job earns him the title of "janitor", the mission reaches Mars after an uneventful trip only to encounter near catastrophe after reaching orbit. A gamma-energy burst cripples the ship and starts a fire that nearly dooms it, but also forces the crew - sans Moss - to make landfall (Mars-fall, I guess) before the team is ready. With the mothership - a technological if unproven marvel - barely able to do more than either fall-out of orbit or head for home, the Mars team is forced to rely on its own. The loss of their habitat on Mars, and the unexpected bloodlust of the team's exploration robot, AMEE, further complicates things. A CGI wonder, AMEE morphs between different predatory poses - human and panther. On mars to help map the planet, AMEE was actually designed for the military, and a hard landing on the planet only brings up the machine's darker side. On the team's own side (barely evening out the odds) are a few surprises - a breathable atmosphere when none is expected (the algae lakes have mysteriously disappeared - so where's the air coming from?) and barely usable technology salvaged from those few space probes which successfully reached the red planet within the past 50 years (the Mars Pathfinder, which landed in the summer of '97, preceded the team by about a half-century). This is a pretty good film - Val Kilmer plays a surprisingly likeable guy, though the film is pretty much paint-by numbers. There aren't that many surprises here (like killing off the pious Terrance Stamp), except for those that stretch plausibility (you'd think that with the money they'd spent on the mission and its importance for the survival of humanity, the planners would have screened out nut-jobs like Pettengill; with all their high-tech, none of the team detect oxygen until they crack their visors and find out they can breathe). It would have been cool to expand on the teams use of all that old earth-junk, but the script was obviously hobbled by the fact that so few missions actually made it to Mars (whether you're counting in metric or otherwise, the number is pretty small). Mars itself gets too little exposure in the script - with the planet approximating little more than a big desert with few surprises - even though the red planet has much to offer. (Oxygen aside, what about the missing ozone layer that's supposed to shield our heroes from deadly UV rays? Even an oxygen-rich atmosphere means little when the atmospheric pressure at sea-level is thinner than what you'd get half a mile over Mt. Everest.) The flick works on its stars, mainly Kilmer, but also Carrie Moss and especially Tom Sizemore playing (again) the tough but tender no. 2 man (seen in "Apollo 13" and "Private Ryan".) Definitely good for a Saturday night rental around February, when there's nothing spectacular enough to spend (money) in the theaters.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible problem after impossible problem, boring
Review: This movie was boring and non sensible for several reasons. First, the five man crew on Mars seemed to face impossible odds, where they sit and wait to die for five minutes with each problem, before some miracle saves them. Such as there is no air on Mars in reality, but at the last second when the crew is out of air, they then discover the air is breathable. Another impossible odd is when their own surveillance robot gets damaged then goes against the crew, just when you think the crew will die, the robot merely runs away. I am very open-minded, but the more amazing things I saw with the movie it just became an insult. It simply gets ridiculous how many killer problems the crew has to go through, and the 5 - 10 minutes the film kills time making the viewer believe that they will actually die. The special effects were great, but they can be seen in any other movie about space.
Rating: 
Summary: Mars Has Been Putting Me to Sleep Lately
Review: I think this is a better film than MISSION TO MARS, but that isn't saying much. It is very interesting how two films about expeditions to Mars get released in a relatively close time frame yet are both so poorly conceived and executed. I think RED PLANET had the greater potential of the two films because it presented an insightful premise about colonizing Mars. It also explained what went wrong or what was perceived as wrong with that scientific premise. It was still good science fiction. However, the premise of RED PLANET is not in the same class as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was thought provoking in an almost spiritual sense. RED PLANET unfortunately needed more than its minimalist plot to carry it. Even though RED PLANET obviously contained a genuine supposition on manned exploration of Mars the script could not support the continuum that the plot needed to maintain the viewers' interest. We get bits of story in snippets, which are interesting, but ultimately the film becomes protracted and fails in an abyss of boredom. This is a sad testament to filmmaking. This should have been a good film.
Rating:
Summary: Good sci-fi
Review: I give this movie 4 stars because it's in the classic sci-fi style and plot. Crash on a planet ,discover strange things, investigate and discover the never before thought of answer while trying to survive and find a way home.The sound could have been better, it doesn't do justice to digital enhancement.
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