Red Planet

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 110 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Red Planet is the second big Mars movie released this year. The first one was Mission to Mars. We, as humans, have a fascination with the planet as it would be the most likely next stop for the further exploration of space for mankind. The idea that it may have once supported life and perhaps could potentially do it again makes for some interesting potential story lines. A couple of very mysterious failures of recent NASA probes only adds more fantasy and intrigue to really get the imagination going.

Red Planet

Set in the year 2025, Red Planet is about a Mars mission to explore what is mysteriously happening to Earth’s attempts to create oxygen on the planet. Mankind has poisoned the Earth, and Mars is being looked to for colonization purposes. As such many probes have been sent to deliver oxygen producing algae to Mars, but suddenly the algae is disappearing the the oxygen levels are dropping. So the first manned mission to Mars is sent on it’s way to investigate. And as seems to happen all too often around the Red Planet things go terribly wrong.

The commander of the mission is Bowman, played by Carrie-Anne Moss of Matrix fame. We are almost treated to a look at her naked in a shower scene, but alas this movie is only rated PG-13. Other recognizable names in the cast include Tom Sizemore as a very colorful scientist and of course Val Kilmer. Kilmer plays the resident systems engineer and along with Moss is the real star of the movie.

There’s also a non-human star in the movie in the form of a robot named AMEE. “She” is a navigation robot sent along to help with mapping, but AMEE used to be a military robot trained to kill. In a very predictable fashion, she switchs modes to killer mode and becomes a rather substantial pain. The way AMEE looks makes me think of an overgrown Sony AIBO robotic dog gone bad. She’s one serious bad ass.

We went into this movie with very low expectations. All of the trailers focused on AMEE, and I was expecting this to be just a glorified futuristic booger movie. And although those elements were present, they were very downplayed and this instead is a pretty darned good scifi movie with enough science to make you think and enough fiction to be entertaining. And some really good special effects didn’t hurt either.

Red Planet was a very pleasant surprise to us. We got everything we expected including some really excellent special effect sequences. But the movie also has an intriguing storyline and some really original concepts. Although there are a few scenes that have some good action, this is not an action based scifi movie, it is more of a thinking man’s type of scifi perhaps with a little suspense mixed in. So do not let the trailers fool you. As we approach Thanksgiving there’s alot of great movies coming out to compete for your hard earned dollars, but if you want some true hardcore scifi, Red Planet is very worthy of consideration.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Benjamin Bratt, Carrie-Anne Moss, PG-13, SciFi, Simon Baker, Theatrical, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer