Mission To Mars

There have been rare exceptions. 2001 A Space Odyssey, Aliens, The Abyss, Starship Troopers, Tron and Blade Runner jump to mind as strong films in the genre but mostly in these sorts of movies we’re left with two or three outstanding bits and the rest just best forgotten.

Mission To Mars has an exploratory team resident on Mars. They find something, there’s a disaster, astronauts have apparently died and the rescue mission is sent on its way. But in no way does Mission To Mars resemble the wonderful Aliens, even if, as you can see, there are some similarities in that plot line.

Mission To Mars is duffed for most of its length by woefully wooden acting, especially from Connie Neilsen, a horrible script and awful direction. The cast is still pretty strong but sometimes personnel doesn’t seem to make much difference.

Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption, The Player, Arlington Road) and Gary Sinise (Of Mice And Men, Apollo Thirteen, Forrest Gump) would ordinarily make my A list any day and director Brian De Palma has honoured us with Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito’s Way, Wise Guys and Carrie.

It’s a wonder that things could turn out so badly.

But then there are the very good bits. An EVA from one craft to another looks great. (Those of you not up with this jargon will need to be told I suppose that EVA stands for getting into the NASA, Kawasaki space suits and hopping out of the space craft).

The alien doesn’t look that cool but a digital exposition on the history of the human race really does look terrific as does some of the emergency on board the spacecraft when it’s hit by meteorites. Try to ignore the awful music in that scene.

A lot of the rest is bad enough to make you squirm. Get to the cinema about an hour late. The good bits are towards the end.