Mission to Mars Review
by "Mark O'Hara" (mwohara AT hotmail DOT com)March 17th, 2000
Mission to Mars (2000)
Witnessing a journey through space is an epic experience, and no film makes the journey more visually stunning than MISSION TO MARS. Unfortunately, other aspects are stunningly bad.
Starting at a send-off for NASA astronauts embarking on a Mars voyage in 2020, MISSION TO MARS follows the lives of several astronauts. Quickly we meet Luc Goddard (Don Cheadle) and his mates in the flight; friends of his who have been excluded from the flight are Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), his wife Toni Blake (Connie Nielsen), and Jim McConnell (Gary
Sinise). Jumping ahead several months, the narrative joins up with the mission that has already begun to explore the surface of Earth's neighbor.
Suddenly a catastrophe devastates the mission and the explorers themselves. Later, NASA officials on an orbiting space station receive the mayday call, and a rescue is organized. Following yet another series of mishaps, the rescue party is also faced with the prospect of being lost in space. Acting as an anchor for the tale is an enormous edifice in the shape of a graceful face - no doubt a sign of intelligent life. What is supposed to keep our interest is the prospect of contact between the humans and whatever may be hiding out in the great sloping visage.
Acting in the film is pinioned by the wooden dialogue. As early as the party before the first launch, characters deliver background information via lines they would never speak in real life. Jim McConnell especially is a victim of the stiff script: he must buck up under the premise of his beloved fellow-astronaut and wife having wasted away and died before his eyes. As he plays this soul-searching space traveler, Sinise wears too much eyeliner and delivers his lines with a quietness fraught with repression.
Tim Robbins also seems out of kilter here. At times he attempts the emotional poeticism he achieved well in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, but floats out of the range of transparent acting; again, the script weighs his character down. One gets the feeling while watching these excellent actors that they accepted their roles not to further the depth of their careers, but to make money for financing their own production companies.
Of course it must have been attractive to work with a director as respected as Brian DePalma. DePalma has his cinematographer employ lovely, spiralling shots that defy gravity and stop just short of making viewers dizzy. In space it doesn't matter if one is upside down, and we experience vicarious disorientation when the camera closes in from space and narrows down to Woody and Toni Blake working on a test and on their marriage. Ultimately, though, DePalma gets little direction from screenwriter Jim Thomas, and the narrative ends up getting lost.
Most effects in this film are strong. From dust storms on the surface of Mars to slow motion, horrifying ballets in the vacuum of space millions of miles from Earth, we see magnificent vistas. What assaults the eye, however, is some of the computer generation bedecking the final few minutes. Oddly conceived and outlandishly plastic, these images seem prematurely born and developmentally incomplete. The close leaves us with cinema vitiated by bad science and New Age malarkey.
MISSION TO MARS is diverting entertainment, but time will not add it to the canon of must-see sci-fi films about space travel.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
