In
a year chalk full of fast food cinema here comes Red Planet, a harmless, special
effects heavy picture, in which nothing very surprising finds its way to the screen.
In
this futuristic science fiction film, Earth is all but destroyed, so the only
hope for the human race rests on the possibility of colonizing Mars. A crew is
sent to the Red Planet to prep it for living conditions. Of course when our intrepid
heroes get to the Red Planet, all hell breaks loose. The team consists of Val
Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Benjamin Bratt, Terence Stamp, Simon Baker, and Carrie-Anne
Moss. Moss stays aboard the ship as the others journey to the planet's surface
where they encounter a government issued robot that has gone haywire.
There
are certainly echoes of that "other" Mars picture, Mission to Mars which
came out earlier this year. Thankfully, Red Planet is nowhere near as heavy handed
as the laughable Brian DePalma opus. No, this picture goes for obvious storytelling
and calculated thrills as our crew desperately tries to out wit a killer android
and escape certain doom.
The
performances are decent enough, most notably Sizemore, who manages to get off
a couple of smart ass zingers. Kilmer and the rest of the cast are just sort of
there--playing it by the numbers. The special effects are convincing enough, although
hardly groundbreaking.
The
director is Anthony Hoffman who, like so many other directors in the past few
years, got his start doing commercials. He directs Red Planet at a brisk pace
but with so few surprises, that I got quite bored. In the end, Red Planet is just
another in a long line of films that opts to play it safe.
