2/5 Bland but watchable sci-fi epic
  by Libretio

RED PLANET

(USA/Australia - 2000)

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)
Theatrical soundtracks: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS

2050: Sent to investigate the failure of a science project on Mars, a group of astronauts become stranded on the 'red planet', at the mercy of a dangerous, malfunctioning robot.

Antony Hoffman's good-looking space opera is a bland but watchable enterprise, toplined by Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt and Terence Stamp, in which a group of disparate characters are cast adrift on an alien world and forced to endure a series of life-threatening crises. Hoffman and his scriptwriters (Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin) pull few surprises out of the hat, and some of the computer-generated visual effects are too fake-looking to make much of an impact, though performances and production values are uniformly fine. Released at the same time as Brian DePalma's equally lackluster MISSION TO MARS (2000).


3/5 Val Kilmer's Space Adventure!
  by James "Scotman" April (Bakersfield, CA)
The second outward bound movie to Mars (the other being Mission To Mars , also skillfully reviewed by this writer) was a box office bomb at the time, raking in $33 million worldwide and yet cost $80 million to produce -- oops! I mean we had the Matrix girl and Batman on this mission!

What happened?

The plot was not too bad at the start. Earth was depleted and an ecological disaster by 2025. In the 2050s they found that their terraforming of Mars was not working, oxygen levels dropping, so they put together a crew of four guys and a babe (that's Commander babe to you, soldier) and took off to Mars.

The ships and hardware are quite well done. The talking computer with no emotion is a standard sci-fi standby. The robot warrior Amee was supposed to be some kind of exploring machine -- this was never made clear in the script.

After getting bombarded by gamma rays and shorting out everything (almost like what happened in Mission to Mars, but I digress) the boys escape in their pod while the Commander (Carrie Ann-Moss, (The Matrix ) as Commander Bowman, a clear nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey's Commander Dave Bowman 2001 - A Space Odyssey (Two-Disc Special Edition)), stays behind.

The landing is pretty frightful with big balloon things coming out as they bounce around in the valley. They also drop off the robot, who gets his computer brains scrambled, goes into Military Mode and starts hunting them down.

The boys are into your standard characters: Coward, Religious, Jock, Security and Pilot. None of these really played well. Character development was quite poor in all of them (except Val Kilmer, the only guy with more lines than the other boys). Their chemistry was just not there. The pilot is pushed off a cliff. The coward (who pushed him off the cliff) gets killed by Amee. The jock (Val Kilmer, Batman Returns a.k.a. the janitor) is the sole survivor. The scientist gets eaten alive by the native bugs.

The fireworks scene where the bugs, like fireflies, burst out of a body with blood and all kinds of stuff. The fun pretty much stops there, though.

The discovery of the Russian probe that could potentially fire Val back into orbit took some suspension of disbelief. Even if he was able to get the batteries recharged, it's been lying dormant on the surface for nearly a century. That its fuel and computer would still work is a bit unreal. At least it spoke clear Russian.

A valiant attempt at a story, a good try at philosophy but a bit too long for my taste. The unrequited love angle was poorly done as well.

The bad robot's optic blue squinting like a human to somehow focus in on its prey is not how a machine would act.

I could go on and on with the plotholes. Somewhat entertaining, on par with Mission to Mars, but as the narration at the end says: "Nothing when the way it was supposed to"!

Rental.

More Mars Fun!:

Invaders from Mars (Special Edition)
Mars Attacks!
The Martian Chronicles


5/5 movie
  by Esteban Samaniego
The movie's great came in just in time no scratches of any kind nothing more or less.

4/5 For Sci Fi Martian buffs, this movie is for you!
  by A. J. Dragowski (New York)
Let me first say that I'm a science fiction nut, so my opinion will be somewhat biased. Having said that, I really enjoyed this film. It deals with the topic of "terra forming" in an intelligent manner. I came away thinking "yeah, we could do that!" No academy awards here, but none the less all characters seemed to fit their parts more than adequately. It's one of those flicks I'll watch at least once a week.

5/5 Well-Above Average Sci-Fi Film
  by Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
I found this to be much better than average among science-fiction films, a very pleasant surprise. To its credit, it resists the temptation to overdo the violence and still keeps the viewer entertained throughout the 106 minutes with some inventive material.

The visuals are good and the special-effects with the robot "Amee" are excellent and fun to watch. The characters in here are neutral: not really likable good guys but not bad guys, either. Also to the film's credit, the profanity is pretty low, at least compared to most films today.

Val Kilmer, Carie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore and Terrence Stamp are recognizable names in here. I don't know if this film ever got its just due.