Val Kilmer, Mars, Val Kilmer, existentialism, and oh yeah, Val Kilmer. Director Anthony Hoffman is either the most astoundingly brave man in Hollywood or simply a naive, desperate fool. However, the Kilmer factor seems to be the least of his problems here. Red Planet is a turgid, badly written melodrama with passable SFX and a b-movie mentality yet it is nowhere near as bad as Brian de Palma’s Mission to Mars.
It is the year 2050 and Earth is quickly reaching its best before date, so a team of astronauts is sent to Mars in order to prepare possible colonisation. A solar storm leaves the majority of them stranded on the planet’s surface, with the exception of team commander Kate Bowman who struggles to bring her boys home. Meanwhile, on the seemingly inhospitable planet the five men soon come under attack from all sides and their numbers quickly dwindle.
Red Planet, for the most part is a stultifying bore. Despite its world-saving plot, the entire film is drenched in startling insignificance. Whole chunks of the film pass by mired in sci-fi cliché and clanking awkwardness. The characters barely exist, muttering mechanical dialogue, lacking anything resembling humanity, each of them lost in a script that seems to think continuing exposition is the way to push a movie forward. And then the writer has the temerity to include the hint of a burgeoning romance between the two leads, as if in a last gasp bid to capture the viewer’s empathy. Nothing really works on this particular Planet, yet Mission to Mars still remains the worse film. For all that is wrong with Red Planet, just how exactly could M2M be any worse? The answer is simple. RP lacks all and any pretension. With the exception of one amazingly inept character, the narrative is geared toward simple race-against-the-clock thrills, culminating in a sweetly traditional ending, which thankfully stays a million miles from the laughably awful de Palma flick.
On paper, the cast is moderately interesting. The main draw will be Carrie Ann Moss, her army of Matrix-loving fans eager to catch another sci-fi glimpse of her. Unfortunately, the wretched script hampers every attempt she makes at giving a worthwhile performance. Out of the leads Tom Sizemore, another usually watchable actor comes off worst. He is the science officer who looks at everything with a coldly detached, fact-oriented mind. For a man with his supposed intelligence, every word that spills from his mouth makes him seem like an inept fool as he tries to get his lips around sentence after sentence of clumsy rhetoric. The less said about Terrance Stamp’s contribution, the better. Let’s just say, his demise is gratefully appreciated. Val Kilmer fares the best, giving an understated, oddly likeable turn as the everyman who ultimately becomes the hero.
At the end of the day, Red Planet is simply further proof that most Hollywood studios are ran by simpering morons, idiotic sheep who go with the flow and get excited by the slightest sign of any developing trend. These people don’t know the first thing about movies. They can’t seem to understand the concept of empathetic characters. The script is seemingly unimportant, just as long as a star’s name is attached to the project; it doesn’t matter how retarded said project is. I can’t begin to state just how much I loathed and despised Mission to Mars, but for this review, it really is irrelevant. What is relevant however is that while Mars certainly make good chocolate bars, it does not bode well for entertaining movies. |
