Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Mission commander Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) is all geared up to go on the first manned mission to Mars, but has to withdraw after his wife develops a terminal illness. Turns out he’s dodged a bullet, as the replacement crew that go there are almost wiped out by a mysterious force when investigating a possible source of water in Cydonia. When the dust settles, only Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) has survived, and it appears very much like that “face on Mars” structure was debunked in error.
With the destruction of communications equipment leaving mission control in the dark, a new rescue mission is put together to investigate. Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) is commanding, but requests that McConnell (Gary Sinise) be added to the team due to his experience and competence. Rounding out the crew are loosely defined mission specialists Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen) and Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O’Connell).
They have their own crisis on reaching Mars, as a micrometeorite shower leads to an explosion in their fuel tanks, forcing them to take a dangerous space excursion over to a remote resupply module and use that as a makeshift lander,a journey that claims Blake’s life, and seemingly provided direct inspiration for Gravity.
After reuniting with an understandably distressed Graham, they set to figuring out what’s the deal with this big ol’ face structure and why it’s transmitting a representation of the human genome, leading to a revelation about the origin of life on Earth that has been pulled entirely out of the film’s ass with no set up whatsoever, leading audiences both then and now to make a kind of pffft noise and promptly regret wasting two hours on it before forgetting it forever.
On viewing this, the greatest disappointment came from largely forgetting after ten minutes that this was a De Palma film. After recently revisiting Mission Impossible, I was surprised to see how much of his style he could impart onto major, big budget outings, and was hoping for similar here. However with the exception of one very impressive tracking shot through the crew quarters, there’s not much of his style on display. You could even argue that the shot of which I speak wasn’t much more than an imitation of Kubrick’s in 2001. The rest of the film is largely bereft of any such wizardry.
That’s not to say it’s a bad looking film. It’s always framed well, and the location for the film’s climax is a great example of a simple idea stunningly executed. But it seems the bulk of the budget for visual interestingnicity (a perfectly cromulent work, thankyousoverymuch) has gone to the CG department, and I wouldn’t say they’ve done badly, but time has rendered their work unremarkable.
It’s then largely left to the cast to carry the film with their performances, and looking at the roster you’d think that wouldn’t present a problem. Robbins, Cheadle, and Sinise should be more than capable of the task between them, but for some reason there’s no chemistry between any of them, with a bunch of stiff, almost wooden performances that’s deeply puzzling to me.
All of them are usually incapable of a poor performance even in a garbage role, and Cheadle by himself should have enough charisma to carry it by himself. For all of them to be so… blank, smacks of a deliberate decision from De Palma, perhaps to better reflect the undoubted professionalism and calm under fire you’d need to be on a NASA mission of this magnitude. I’d happy swap this for some more emotion on display throughout the film, rather than in very infrequent thirty second stretches, particularly in the final reels which isn’t much more than Sinise blandly narrating a dated CG showreel of alien holiday snaps.
We’re not big believers in metacritic scores around here, and Mission to Mars is a case in point. A score of 34 / 100 isn’t fair in the slightest, but at the same time, if my preferred rating scheme of watch it fo’ shizzle / maybe watch it / don’t bother, it’s very firmly in the don’t bother category. It’s one of the more slickly produced films in there, but unfortunately it’s just too boring to give it even a guarded recommendation to sci-fi or De Palma fans.