Subject: Review: Mission to Mars (2000)

From: Jerry Saravia <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 20:07:25 -0000

MISSION TO MARS (2000)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: One star and a half

Firstly, Brian De Palma has aped Hitchcock in most of his work, and done it with
real style and pizazz. Sometimes his work turned to other corners of
inspiration, like his homage to Eisenstein's "Potemkin" in "The Untouchables."
Then there were his early political films like "Greetings" and "Hi, Mom!" But
where on earth does "Mission to Mars" belong in this director's career?
Somewhere between the botched "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and the ludicrously
overwrought "Scarface." "Mission to Mars" is a bad film, a sort of cinematic
link to Kubrick's "2001," but it is a boring, highly unimaginative work, not the
sort of enjoyably sleazy badness of "Body Double" or the campiness of "Raising
Cain." All you might do is doze through most of this mission. 

A few astronauts in the year 2020 are sent to Mars to excavate and discover the
red planet where no atmosphere exists. According to this film (and I suppose
this is a known scientific fact), it takes six months to get to Mars from Earth
and another six to return naturally. It felt like six months sitting through
this mess. But I digress, as we discover in the first half-an-hour that a trip
to Mars was a foolish idea from the start. A sandstorm with a peering, snakelike
tornado sucks in everything in its sight, including two fellow astronauts. One
survives, as played by Don Cheadle, which makes sense since he is the best actor
in the group. Other astronauts at a nearby ship in space decide to go to Mars
and get Cheadle back safely. The actors playing this other group of geniuses
include Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Jerry O'Connell and Connie Nielsen. They all
seem out of place, as if they rather be somewhere else. 

To be fair, "Mission to Mars" has some bravura moments since no De Palma film
can be without at least one (remember the breathless long take at the beginning
of "Bonfire of the Vanities," for starters?) A tense sequence in the ship which
is slowly coming apart due to holes in and around  the exterior is a vintage
suspense piece. I also liked the sand storm that sucks everything in its sight.
And there is a nifty long take inside the ship as it rotates and we see all the
different characters defying gravity. Still, Stanley Kubrick mastered those
kinds of shots with far more finesse and control than is evidenced here. And
that is it, folks. The ending is protracted and corny, including the sight of an
alien that would barely survive as someone's desktop background in their
computer. It takes so long to get to the rushed climax that all I said to myself
was, "Is that it?" Can De Palma be serious trying to pass something meaningful
and poetic in what appears to be a video game sequence that would not make it
any arcade? 

I sat dumbfounded and annoyed with "Mission to Mars" because everyone involved
can, and should, do better. I know De Palma is trying to get back into the game
with a box-office hit. "Mission to Mars" is the low road to desperation -
unexciting, inert and innocuous. It is clear evidence that De Palma is
temporarily AWOL. 

For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at
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X-RT-RatingText: 1.5/4