Subject: Review: Mission to Mars (2000)

From: [email-masked] (Christian Pyle)
Date: 19 Apr 2000 16:21:28 GMT

Mission to Mars
Reviewed by Christian Pyle
Directed by Brian De Palma  
Written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost 
Starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, and Jerry
O'Connell
Grade:  C+

"Mission to Mars" opens in 2020 as a group of astronauts gather for a barbecue
to celebrate the upcoming jaunt to the red planet.  Then we jump ahead thirteen
months and scientist Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) is on Mars with an international
team.  They're out surveying when a sudden tornado attacks them with a
supernatural malevolence.  As the dust clears, a giant stone face is revealed
beneath the Martian soil.  Only Luke survives to crawl back to his base and
send a brief message to mission control before contact is lost.  At mission
control on the World Space Station, Luke's pals Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) and
Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) plan a rescue mission.  A year later, their ship
nears Mars with two more astronauts along:  Woody's wife Terri Fisher (Connie
Nielsen) and the inexperienced Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O'Connell).  Things don't go
quite as planned, however, and the rescuers find themselves in mortal danger
before they even get to the planet.

Although it sounds like "'Saving Private Ryan' in space," "Mission to Mars" is
an equal mixture of "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Apollo 13," "Armageddon," and
"Contact."  (For most of the movie, I was mentally naming the source of each
scene and motif.)  "Mars"' closest kin are "2001" and "Contact" because the
central storyline is humanity encountering extraterrestrial life.  Certainly
"Mars" is nowhere close to the magnificence of "2001" (which ranks among the
greatest movies ever made), but it compares favorably to "Contact."  While
"Contact" did a better job at making the translation of a message received from
aliens seem believable ("Mars" rushes through the interpretation of its
message), "Mars" has a better resolution.  "Contact" built a lot of suspense
for the meeting promised by the title, then let audiences down by having the
alien and its world appear as projections from the protagonist's memory.  As a
character on "South Park" put it, "I waited two hours to see the alien, and
it's her goddamn father!"  "Mars" has a much stronger ending.

Produced by a collaboration of the screenwriting team of "Predator" and the
author of "Speed," the script for "Mars" has plenty of thrills and chills, but
character development occurs in awkward patches of down time that almost seem
to have a blinking subtitle saying "character development."  Jim misses his
dead wife.  Woody and Terri love each other.  Phil is  . . . uh . . . wow, they
must have cut that scene.

The premise, of course, is nonsense.  NASA would never undertake a rescue
mission like this to save one astronaut who may already be dead.  It would be
too expensive and time-consuming to be feasible.  (The rescue team arrives a
year after they lost contact with Luke.)  Scientifically-minded folks may also
pick apart the movie's science, but to an English major like me most of it
seemed realistic.  (And in the movies it's not important to be real, only to
seem real).

Bottom line:  Semi-intelligent fun with sporadic action.

© 2000 Christian L. Pyle

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