Red Planet

Rating:
Summary: All flash and no substance
Review: Red Planet is a huge compilation of special effects and flat characters. Apparently, the world of sci-fi has been reduced to gadgetry, according to this director anyway. There are gadgets galore...from a dog-like robot to foil mapping devices to giant bouncy-ball space shuttles. The mother-ship is an overwhelming collage of lights and buttons that all seem to do nothing. The character development simply did not exist. There are several characters at the start of our story and frankly, no one even cares when they are picked off one by one. The on-board computer with its simulated voice has more depth than some of the main characters. The predictable plot dictates the survivors and the outcome of this virtually suspense-free movie. If you want to see some cool special effects and/or futuristic gadgets, then this is the movie for you. However, if your interested in an intelligent scienc-fiction movie with a point, then steer clear of this dog.

Rating:
Summary: Better than MISSION, not up to the quality of PITCH BLACK.
Review: In 2000 there were two movie released dealing with Earth's first human landing on Mars. The first one out of the starting gates was MISSION TO MARS. That movie was full of pretty pictures, but lacked any substance; contained an all-star cast, but no talent was displayed; and gave tribute to a classic film by one great director (Kubrick's 2001), but failed to display the talent of it's own director (DePalma). The other Mars movie of 2000 is RED PLANET. It is a much better film than MISSION TO MARS.

The movie takes place in the not too distant future of mid-century 2000. The Earth is polluted and overpopulated and not only are fossil fuels running out, but so is oxygen. Algae has been deposited and growing on Mars so that if all else fails, life on Earth can be transported to the Red Planet. However, after years of depositing and growing the plants, oxygen levels on Mars drop off significantly and all traces of plant growth disappear. A team is assembled to travel to Mars to discover what has happened and bring back answers (and perhaps some hope) to Earth.

Unlike MISSION TO MARS, RED PLANET doesn't take itself too seriously. It's a by-the-book Hollywood formula movie. The movie boasts a talented cast of supporting actors who must have enjoyed themselves while making the picture because their characters are believable (unlike those in MISSION). Also, the effects and scenery are just as beautiful as in MISSION (well the ship here isn't as detailed as in that movie, but that's a minor point).

The only major flaw of the picture is that it fails to really engage the audience. Since this is a formula film and it takes place on Mars there isn't nothing new to see (well AMEE is pretty cool, but killer robot dogs aren't new either). The film has more substance than MISSION TO MARS, but it lacks the excitement of another 2000 space film, PITCH BLACK. Of course, that film contained some blood and guts, but it was much more exciting. RED PLANET doesn't have the rush of PITCH BLACK, but nevertheless is a nice piece of mind-candy movie to keep your mouth wet.

Rating:
Summary: Decent, better than the reviews.
Review: I realize that this movie has received many negative reviews, but I actually enjoyed the film. I liked the fact that it strayed from typical sci-fi film and set off on a new path. Instead of the usual alien-attacks-people film, this movie actually gives the viewer a scientifically viable reason behind what is going on in the film. I especially like the fact that the filmmakers did not try to impose their vision on unanswerable questions. In their words, they even say that 'science can't answer the really interesting questions.'

To sum this one up, if you are a hardcore sci-fi fan, you will probably not like this movie. If, however, you are looking for a believable space film, you will find something to enjoy in this one.

Rating:
Summary: Thought it'd be a lot better
Review: I first saw 'Mission to Mars' which I didn't necessarily like. But when I heard about 'Red Planet', it looked a whole lot better than 'Mars.' Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Like all movies that take place on Mars, something goes wrong at the beginning, putting the crew in danger. Unlike other movies, though, Mars has little to do with the movie. It's about their robot AMEE who is set on military mode and is trying to kill the stranded crew while Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), tries to save them.

Val Kilmer does his normal, "I can't act" role, which I was ready for, so didn't mind too much. However, Tom Sizemore surprised me. I loved him in 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Enemy of the State', but found that in this film, he was very hard to believe, and his acting was stale...that was disappointing.

Overall, I found about 2 minutes of this film entertaining. It all involved the death of one of the crew members, however. In my opinion, 'Red Planet' was doomed from the start. With poor acting, lack of any tension, and a plot I could care less about, the actors and actresses had very little going for them...even the ending was rushed, almost as if the writer had nothing to use, so he just slapped on something to finish the script. This film could've been so much better, but it wasn't. (Come to think of it, I had trouble even believing the special effects.)

Rent this movie if you're bored or if you really want to see it for yourself...if you liked 'Mission to Mars', you won't like this, but it's up to you. :)

Rating:
Summary: "Planet" Left Me Red in the Face
Review: After having to endure one hundred and seven minutes of terrible acting, horrendous dialogue and a story so flat it'd make the Great Plains look rocky I can only hold my head in shame as I admit that I purchased this DVD without previewing it first. My faith in Val Kilmer, which he's established with dramatic turns in Thunderheart and Heat, led me to believe that this Mars movie would be better than it's predecessor - Mission to Mars. It's not; in fact it's far worse. Whereas Mission had some intriguing characters, actors who actually took the material seriously and a plot, this outing can boast none of the above.

Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix (another movie I throroughly disliked) stars as the captain of the first flight to the mysterious Red Planet. She's leading a group of ragtag elitists whose mission is to begin colonizing the planet for an expected move from Earth. You see, in the future we've depleted our resources to dangerously low levels (the only element of the film that rings true) so we're forced into undertaking the task of taraforming Mars, thus making it inhabitable for human life. I'm sure that I'm in the minority here but I don't exactly understand how the writing team of Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin expects us to be rooting for mankind when we've already stripmined one planet and are only bound to do it again.

And Kilmer plays, get this, the janitor. He and the others fall to Mars in what amounts to the only halfway interesting scene in the entire film while Moss stays behind to reboot the ship, fighting a wildfire at zero gravity in the process. If you think that sounds interesting it is, but I suggest you skip ahead a few chapters to get there because everything the preceeds it is snore-worthy and what follows is so laughable you won't even be allowed the previlage of catching some Z's while it's still on. That's what makes this film so intolerable, not only is it mindless (trying telling that to the filmmakers who actually think they have something to say here) but it's ridiculously slow moving. I can't imagine this picture engaging anyone on any level. I wouldn't recommend it to people in search of a dumb fun summer popcorn flick, and I certainly would advise arthouse crowds to stay as far away as they possibly can.

It's hard to figure how so many fine actors could be attracted to a script this awful. Maybe it was that whole unerlying, "god theme," which since I'm an atheist I must admit I have a bit of a prejudice towards. But having said that, I'm not entirely close-minded to the idea of a "higher power;" at least not in films. I actually quite enjoyed Steve Martin's Leap of Faith and thought very highly of last year's box office smash Cast Away. But this movies seems more intent on patronizing religion (unintentionally, of course) mostly due to the fact that the material is handled so poorly.

Usually about this time in one of my reviews I like to point out a few redeeming characteristics in the film but aside from the two before mentioned scenes there aren't any. The characters, the acting, the writing, the directing; they're all shallow. I suppose, and I'm really reaching here, I could point out the fact that Carrie-Anne Moss did go on to follow this up with a role in Memento, which is far and away my favorite film of this year so far, and in which she gives a very solid performance.

Now since this is the first single star review I've written I should probably point out the criteria for earning such jeers. First thing is that I have to never, and I mean never, want to see the movie in question again. Second, it's usually a sign that the picture is really bad when I catch myself checking my watch and not even a minute has passed since I'd last checked it. Thirdly, if I have the urge to get up and leave the theatre or stop the disc before the film is even over, then I know it must be pretty uninvolving for me to feel that way. Red Planet meets all three and it isn't even a first for it's two leads, Val (Batman Forever) or Carrie-Anne (The Matrix). So if your still asking, yes it's that bad.

Rating:
Summary: If it's like this, then I don't want to go...
Review: I really wish Hollywood would have the rocks to provide us with a science fiction movie that didn't end up being 'Die Hard in Space'. Brian DePalma's 'Mission to Mars' had all the verve of a Pinter play and characters modeled after William Hurt's style of woodeness. 'Red Planet' on the other hand provides a slightly less serious film about a much more interesting prospect than simply going to Mars. The year is 2057 and mankind has once again despoiled Mother Earth and must find a new place to despoil, so they select Mars. Then after nuking the polar ice caps to release CO2 which causes a greenhouse effect and thereby raising the temperature of the planet, they then launch probes containing algae to the surface. The algae live off of CO2 and release oxygen as a by-product. Not a bad idea and scientists have believed this would be a good way to actually do it. Forgetting of course that Mars' gravitation is much too low to sustain a viable atmosphere.

When oxygen levels suddenly stop rising and begin to decrease, it's decided that they must send a ship out to investigate, enter the intrepid crew. Carrie-Anne Moss plays Captain Kate Bowman, no doubt in homage to 2001, and for some reason people still find her interesting. Val Kilmer plays the sensitive engineer Gallagher, Benjamin Bratt (Law & Order), appears as the arrogant and self-aggrandizing co-pilot, Ted Santen. Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) is the biologist, Dr. Quinn Burchenal, and Terrance Stamp as the philosophical, God-searching Dr.Bud Chantillas, who of course is doomed to die. The last member of this so-called crew is AMEE, a robot hunter-killer that resembles a cheetah on lone from the Marines as a ground navigator. This movie offers up more cliches than a Glenn A. Larson episode of Battlestar Galactica. Cliches aside, the crew was at least more likeable than the characters in Mission to Mars.

The Mars-1 spacecraft looks as though it were designed by committee who didn't talk to each other. The final result being a long shaft with counter-rotating rings near each end with what look like cargo containers strung between them. Why these rotating sections are there are anyone's guess, because none of the sets seems to have curved floors or walls. However, the ship has 'artificial gravity' which is either provided by the rotating rings or gravity generators built into the decking - whatever it is they never say. The interior sets are spacious to say the least, Nasa should be lucky to have so much unused space. Duty stations and consoles look like afterthoughts. The crew of six spends the next six months en route to mars, awake and interacting with each other. I don't know about you, but if I was stuck in a confined space with only six people, there would only be one person at the end when we got to Mars.

Things go bad for the ship when it gets whacked by a gamma ray burst from the Sun and shorts out everything but the AI computer, Lucile. While Bowmen spends the rest of the movie being told what to do by the computer, the boys launch down to the planet's surface and promptly crash in one of the funniest unintentional moments in the film. The little landing craft bounces down cliff side after cliff side only to come to rest at the bottom of a canyon. AMEE, who was in the landing craft is lost after the thruster array is jettisoned, is of course damaged and doomed to go on a killing rampage after the survivor. Meanwhile, Chantillas dies from injuries sustained in the crash, the rest are left to walk the several kilometers distance to the habitat module that was set up automatically months before their arrival. Somehow these spacesuits that do not have back packs of any sort have 7½ hours of oxygen in them - just enough time to make it to the habitat site to find out that it has been trashed. Defeated and forlorn, the men decide to sit down and die of asphyxiation when one of them gets the bright idea to take off his helmet, whereupon they learn that there is a breathable atmosphere on Mars.

The more I think about this film the more I realize that both it and Mission to Mars weren't that good. Both had their moments, but could have benefited from another script treatment. That and perhaps letting other directors actually make the film. Red Planet's special effects are really quite good, especially the liquid fire and lander crash sequences. Overall, however the end result is a mediocre attempt to do a Mars movie. It's cliche and largely unoriginal, but still delivers some really nice bits. Val Kilmer is wasted and has been in every movie since Tombstone and his brilliant performance as Doc Holiday. I have a genetic dislike for Carrie-Anne Moss and have since the Matrix (perhaps the worst film of 1999). Red Planet delivers a slight twist on the 'life on Mars' bit, but that really isn't enough to make this a memorable film.

Rating:
Summary: "Red Planet" ranks a rental at the least.
Review: I heard bad things about "Red Planet," so I rented it first, and now I'm buying it. If you've seen "Mission to Mars" and were disappointed, try this DVD. It's got some extras, like French language and cast notes, but it also has a ton of deleted scenes. Kilmer does a great job with what seems to have been a shallow character at inception and Moss plays a hard-core commander pretty convincingly. There's a lot of action once you get past the beginning, and the prop and technology concept designers really went all-out with some creative futuristic stuff. The narration at the beginning and end, I'll agree, is kind of annoying; they probably should have used textural intro screens to provide the background. And although we don't see as much of Benjamin Bratt as some of us gals would have liked, "Red Planet" is overall a neat space romp.

Rating:
Summary: Very Entertaining
Review: the picture and sound quality was first rate.spectacular comes to mind.the reddish Mars landscapes were beautiful.the scene where the landing craft comes down under parachute and bounces into what looks like the grand canyon was outstanding.i recommend either renting or buying this dvd just to test your home theater.you won't be disappointed,and i think you'll be impressed with the movie.

Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: This movie is pretty damn cool to watch.It has great effects,a smooth cast,And a ticked off navigational robot named "AMEE".The price is worth the great picture and sound you get,but no real extras hurt the purpose of a dvd disc.

Rating:
Summary: MISSION TO THE RED PLANET(Mars?)
Review: When I think of this movie as a sci-fi movie, I get a CGI headache. I even understood MISSION TO MARS, but all I could tell is that when Val met Carrie, it was love at the next first mission to space, everyone else probably signed off to do other more intelligent movies. One of the more suprising elements of this movie was the addition of Terrance Stamp. His appearance was almost as awesome as Robert Forrester in Supernova, but like supernova his character died almost halfway through the plot too. As far as the plot goes, I could tell what was going to happen, from start to finish, which I think makes the movie so disappointing, especailly with the old "the escape ship will only support two" routine. So, I guess all-and-all the rest of the movie was fine, just pretend, I'm serious.