Mission to Mars Review
by "Sean Molloy" (sean AT mediajunkies DOT com)March 12th, 2000
Mission To Mars (** out of ****)
Starring Gary Sinise, Connie Nielsen, Tim Robbins
Directed By Brian DePalma
Buena Vista Pictures, Rated PG, 2000
Running Time: 1 Hour 53 Minutes
By Sean Molloy
[MEDIUM SPOILERS]
"I'm afraid there's a few things in his movie that couldn't quite happen. Having people in space take their helmets off is wonderful drama, but..."
- Buzz Aldrin, commenting on Brian DePalma's latest film Mission To Mars
Before I begin, I have to admit that I went into Mission To Mars armed with a fairly sharp bias. I'm guilty of reading piles of internet anti-hype and spiteful test-screening reviews. I am not instilled with confidence when I hear that instead of showing up to discuss his film with students at a university's Director's Screening Night, Brian DePalma sent along a piece of paper bearing the words "Hope you have fun!" I'm also guilty of hoping Mission To Mars would end up being something it did not aim to be - an intelligent and original science-fiction film. Everything here has been done before - and done far better - by films like 2001, Close Encounters, The Abyss and Contact. Call this course Intro To Science Fiction, and it's being added to the curriculum about thirty years too late.
So, I didn't get what I wanted, it's not the first time... instead of the memorable and thoughtful sci-fi epic I desired, or the flaming heap of Armageddon-style dung I expected, Brian DePalma has delivered a beautifully filmed and occasionally effective space melodrama. The astronauts on this Mission are the kind that watch videos of their dead wives, and shed a tear as she stops to deliver a philosophical soliloquy in the middle of a party. They speak in exposition, relaying in movie-science terms the concept of DNA to one another, as if they think their counterparts didn't graduate from high school. They clue fellow spacemen and spacewomen in on what exactly the mission they've been on for thirteen months is. They have their share of improbable but undeniably suspenseful close calls and near misses.
Science and logic are freely traded for drama, usually to some degree of success. There's a effectively moving moment where a character removes his helmet in the depths of space... what occurs then on the screen is far removed from what would have actually happened to the poor bastard. Good thing, since the resulting blood-boiling, explosive mess would probably have marred the dramatic occasion a tad. I probably would have even shed a tear if the depth of character development went beyond "is currently involved in a loving relationship" or "was at one time involved in a loving relationship."
The upshot of this void of personality is that the script thankfully manages to sidestep the tired introduction of the "crewmember gone bad." Not a one of them falls prey to the dreaded disorder of space dimentia. Could this be the first space movie to feature a crew that actually gets along with one another?
The film's greatest strengths are visual ones... Mission To Mars begins with what appears to be a long, continuous take, exploring a group of people at a party. He did the same exact thing at the beginning of last year's atrocious Snake Eyes, only here, it seems as if he's just trying to establish it as some sort of DePalma trademark, because it's absolutely pointless.
The film's second major sequence, however, is an absolute stunner... the unsuspecting crew of one of the Mars teams (led by Don Cheadle) accidentally summons up the wrath of the planet itself - if you've seen a preview for the film, you've probably seen the snake-like dust funnel. It's frightening, and it looks fantastic. And as these events are transpiring on the planet, Mission Control is monitoring them millions of miles away, twenty minutes after they actually happen. It's set up as a potentially nifty story-telling device, but unfortunately nothing ever really comes of it.
The rest of the film follows the rescue crew as they try to get themselves to Mars and rescue whoever may have survived... There's some satisfyingly suspenseful moments as, inevitably, things don't go quite as planned. Most of the scenes in space are pretty impressive technical feats. DePalma's camera floats and rotates around the spinning space station with disorienting dexterity, but too often it looks like he's doing it just to show off. And the sweeping rocky vista of Red Planet itself looked, well, just like I'd expect Mars to look.
As Fozzie Bear used to say, "Getting There Is Half The Fun." Apparently, he's never been on a mission to Mars... Alas, once our intrepid crew arrives on the Red Planet, What They Find When They Get There is insipid and boring. Cover your ears if you don't care to hear this, but I'm not really giving away more than what's in the trailers... if you've seen a single commercial, I guarantee you already know how the Mission ends. I don't know, maybe I've just read far too many science fiction novels in my time, but for my money, human DNA is probably the least interesting item on the list of "cool, exciting things you can find in space." Mix in "lame computer animation" and combine it with "overwrought emotional dreck," and now you know what Mars' limp secret is.
I once played a game on my old Commodore 64 called Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders. It was one of Lucasarts' first comic point-and-click adventures, and it featured astronauts that were headed off to explore that creepy face structure on Mars, much like this daring crew. What they uncovered was a sinister plot concocted by a race of Alien Elvis Impersonators to make the people of Earth terminally stupid.
Now that woulda been somethin'.
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