2 of 10
Cinematography by Peter Suschitzky
Val Kilmer
Carrie-Anne Moss
Benjamin Bratt
Tom Sizemore
Simon Baker
Terence Stamp
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| Red Planet 2 of 10 |
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| Directed by Antony Hoffman Cinematography by Peter Suschitzky Val Kilmer Carrie-Anne Moss Benjamin Bratt Tom Sizemore Simon Baker Terence Stamp |
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| If I needed to come up with one word to describe this film, it would probably be red, for obvious reasons. Any movie about Mars is going to be really, really red. Next word would almost certainly be forgettable. It is filled to over-flowing with Hollywood stock characters: the witty blue-collar hero, the woman commander who refuses to take any flack from her entirely male crew (but still manages to fall in love with the blue-collar one), the handsome and massively egotistical assistant, the plucky and sacrificial sidekick, and, that most important character in sic-fi ensemble films: the coward. The story also seemed to be at least partially driven by financial concerns. The special effects are laughable and look a great deal like a Pixar film, which is just fine if it's a cartoon, but really bad if it's meant to be live action. And although making absolutely everything happen either in the spaceship or on the dry, red surface of the planet certainly saves on cast expenses, it does cause things to drag a little. The biggest problem with the film, however, is that the producer apparently tried cutting costs by leaving out a screenwriter, because the script is simply horrible. It doesn't even rise to the level of predictable. That would be to give it too much credit. There is one striking moment, however, when Carrie-Anne Moss (alone on the ship) abruptly loses contact with Val "The Witty Blue-Collar Hero" Kilmer, on the red planet. Silence falls, and you can actually feel her emotions. Unfortunately, the director swiftly returns us to the humdrum, implausible, raucous scene back on Mars, destroying whatever emotional attachment the audience was even thinking about giving to the film. Faced with the choice of watching this again, or jumping off a tall building, I would not jump. But I might have to think about it for a moment. | ||||||