Subject: Review: Red Planet (2000)

From: Michael Dequina <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Nov 2000 01:52:54 GMT

_Red_Planet_ (PG-13) * (out of ****)

From Christopher Columbus to Wyatt Earp to Steve Prefontaine to the
lambada (!), the track record for dueling Hollywood projects on the same
subject has been less than stellar.  With Warner Bros.' release of the
second--and worst--of the year's Mars movies, _Red_Planet_, Tinseltown
has once again completed a tandem non-event.

The latter half of _Mission_to Mars_, directed by Brian DePalma and
released by Disney earlier this year, justifiably left viewers with a bad
taste with its high-minded but lame-brained artistic pretensions.  But an
unfortunate side effect was that the decent first half of the film,
capped by a suspenseful domino-effect disaster sequence, was completely
forgotten.  In the case of _Red_Planet_, however, there's nothing of
merit to forget--or, at least, the film's only redeeming quality, its
perfectly solid visual effects, show up onscreen constantly enough to
remind us of the wasted effort turned in by the FX crews.

The year is 2050, and we are told through voiceover by one Commander
Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) that the earth has become so polluted that
it will soon no longer be able to sustain life.  All sights have been set
on Mars, where algae has been planted by unmanned probes to generate
oxygen.  But something has gone wrong, and a crew led by Bowman has been
sent to the red planet to figure out what.  After a shuttle landing
mishap strands Gallagher (Val Kilmer), Burchenal (Tom Sizemore),
Pettengill (Simon Baker), Santen (Benjamin Bratt), and Chantilas (Terence
Stamp) on the Mars surface and leaves Bowman aboard the main orbiting
spacecraft, the crew is given even more problems to solve.

Their problems, however, are none compared to the ones faced by director
Antony Hoffman, who is given the arduous task of making Chuck Pfarrer and
Jonathan Lemkin's script into a watchable film.  Simply put, nothing
really happens, and the whole "earth in danger" framework becomes moot as
Gallagher and company simply search for a way to get back aboard the
mothership and go home.  The only real conflict in the script are the
weak attempts the writers make at creating "villains": a crew member who
accidentally causes a problem early-on, then is retroactively made out to
have evil intent later in the film; and, more prominently, AMEE, a
scouting robot who turns from gentle to killer with the flip of a switch.
 Guess which setting she ends up on when the shuttle crashes?

Hoffman, a commercial director making his feature debut, simply throws
his hands in the air and instead focuses on what he knows best: the look.
 As mentioned before, the visual effects are impressive, particularly the
completely CGI AMEE; and the ship sets and desert locations convince. 
But looks can't count for everything, and Hoffman appears to completely
bank on the attractive appearances of stars Moss and Kilmer to make the
romance between their characters work for the audience.  Needless to say,
it takes more than Ultra-Brite smiles to conceal the fact that this
undercooked subplot was sloppily grafted on to give the film more appeal
to females--who are instead likely to be insulted by the love story's
completely arbitrary nature (as will all other demographics).

As ludicrous as _Red_Planet_ is, the copy writers at the WB publicity
department actually one-up the makers of the film by pasting on a loud
disclaimer at the top of the press notes that urges the media to not
reveal the film's ending.  This blurb would lead one to believe there's
some big surprise in store, but perhaps the only shock up the film's
sleeve is how closely it hews to everyone's formulaic expectations.

©2000 Michael Dequina

Michael Dequina
[email-masked] | [email-masked] | [email-masked]
Mr. Brown's Movie Site:  http://www.mrbrownmovies.com
CinemaReview Magazine:  http://www.CinemaReview.com
on ICQ: #25289934  |  on AOL Instant Messenger: MrBrown23

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