Red Planet
1.5/4
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker, Benjamin Bratt, Terrence Stamp
Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Violence, Brief Nudity and Brief Language
It's always obvious when a movie makes up the story as it goes along. Never has it been more painfully obvious than with "Red Planet," a dull, shallow and dreadfully boring science-fiction "thriller." Not only is it filled with stupid cliches, but they're partially baked cliches. The characters are so undeveloped that calling them stick figures would be grossly overstating their depth, the plot has ADD, and director Antony Hoffman is completely incapable of handling a $70 million project like this.
"Red Planet's" release date was pushed back twice, and it's not hard to see why. It has the potential to be a intense science-fiction thriller along the lines of "Alien" mixed with "2001: A Space Odyssey" (or so I assume, since I haven't seen the latter, yet), but the studio probably balked when they realized how little box office potential the final result actually had. The film reeks of studio interference. It starts off with some intriguing, if shallowly written, philosophy about our place in the universe. Then it devolves into terrible action and a lame fight for survival.
The film takes place a few decades into the future. Due to pollution and overpopulation, the Earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable. A last ditch effort is to make our nearest solid planet, Mars, inhabitable. They sent algae over there to create atmosphere, but it stopped working. A team of six has been sent to find out why.
The acting is flat. All actors have shown promise in the past, but with a script like this, there's not much that anyone could do. Carrie-Anne Moss is the best of the lot. Although she doesn't have a huge range, she deserves to be more than the one-hit wonder that she became after "The Matrix" movies. She's good at taking charge while still being sympathetic, but she spends most of her time talking to a computer. Val Kilmer is terrible; this is easily the worst performance he's ever given. Tom Sizemore is miscast. Simon Baker does what he can with an inconsistent character (ditto for Benjamin Bratt). Terrence Stamp does his best not to choke on the lines that he is given, but he doesn't have much screen time.
First time-director Antony Hoffman is clearly in over his head. He loses control of the film fairly early, and struggles to regain it. He never does. The whole film seems like the regurgitation of sci-fi movies that Ed Wood would have loved, and he fails to bring any sort of life to them. It's as if he is constantly remembering subplots, and trying to tie them all up, but Hoffman's direction is extremely clumsy, and the film keeps stumbling to the finish line. Even the climax, which involves a fight with a robot (who is conveniently forgotten for most of the film), is anticlimactic.
I'll admit that some of the special effects are impressive (which was the studio's excuse for the release delays), and there are some B-movie-ish pleasures to be found here and there. But all in all, "Red Planet" is a bore.
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker, Benjamin Bratt, Terrence Stamp
Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Violence, Brief Nudity and Brief Language
It's always obvious when a movie makes up the story as it goes along. Never has it been more painfully obvious than with "Red Planet," a dull, shallow and dreadfully boring science-fiction "thriller." Not only is it filled with stupid cliches, but they're partially baked cliches. The characters are so undeveloped that calling them stick figures would be grossly overstating their depth, the plot has ADD, and director Antony Hoffman is completely incapable of handling a $70 million project like this.
"Red Planet's" release date was pushed back twice, and it's not hard to see why. It has the potential to be a intense science-fiction thriller along the lines of "Alien" mixed with "2001: A Space Odyssey" (or so I assume, since I haven't seen the latter, yet), but the studio probably balked when they realized how little box office potential the final result actually had. The film reeks of studio interference. It starts off with some intriguing, if shallowly written, philosophy about our place in the universe. Then it devolves into terrible action and a lame fight for survival.
The film takes place a few decades into the future. Due to pollution and overpopulation, the Earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable. A last ditch effort is to make our nearest solid planet, Mars, inhabitable. They sent algae over there to create atmosphere, but it stopped working. A team of six has been sent to find out why.
The acting is flat. All actors have shown promise in the past, but with a script like this, there's not much that anyone could do. Carrie-Anne Moss is the best of the lot. Although she doesn't have a huge range, she deserves to be more than the one-hit wonder that she became after "The Matrix" movies. She's good at taking charge while still being sympathetic, but she spends most of her time talking to a computer. Val Kilmer is terrible; this is easily the worst performance he's ever given. Tom Sizemore is miscast. Simon Baker does what he can with an inconsistent character (ditto for Benjamin Bratt). Terrence Stamp does his best not to choke on the lines that he is given, but he doesn't have much screen time.
First time-director Antony Hoffman is clearly in over his head. He loses control of the film fairly early, and struggles to regain it. He never does. The whole film seems like the regurgitation of sci-fi movies that Ed Wood would have loved, and he fails to bring any sort of life to them. It's as if he is constantly remembering subplots, and trying to tie them all up, but Hoffman's direction is extremely clumsy, and the film keeps stumbling to the finish line. Even the climax, which involves a fight with a robot (who is conveniently forgotten for most of the film), is anticlimactic.
I'll admit that some of the special effects are impressive (which was the studio's excuse for the release delays), and there are some B-movie-ish pleasures to be found here and there. But all in all, "Red Planet" is a bore.
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