Red Planet | | Cast : | Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss | | Director : | Antony Hoffman | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | November 10, 2000 | | DVD Released Date : | March 27, 2001 | | Language : | Unknown (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 04, 2005 | | Summary | ernest, if boring sci-fi | Content
 | With over-population and pollution threatening the future of the human race by the middle of the 21st century, NASA turns to Mars as a possible avenue for colonization. (Robots sent ahead build Hab-1, a condo for the crew on Mars; they also sprinkle lakes of algae meant to convert Mars's CO2 atmosphere into breathable oxygen). Led by the ultra-competent Commander Bowman (Carrie Moss), and including a philospoher (Terrence Stamp), the hot-shot (Ben Bratt), the existentialist geneticist (Tom Sizemore) and a terra-former named Pettengill (Simon Baker) whose selfishness borders on paranoia, the team nears Mars full of anticipation. The only crewman not quite awed by the prospect if Gallagher (Kilmer) the wisecracking janitor. When a gamma-energy burst cripples the ship before it can make a planned landing, the crew (sans Moss) escape and make landfall (Mars-fall, I guess) before they've had time to scout the planet from orbit. Big mistake - something has wrecked their habitat, stranding the team on Mars. With the mothership barely able to do more than either fall-out of orbit or head for home, Kilmer and crew are forced to rely on each other, with little more to do than watch the oxygen levels of their spacesuits drop. Surprise - they find the Martian atmosphere now loaded with oxygen - condemning them to death by starvation instead of asphyxiation. Also, they must now guard against AMEE, their survey robot run amok. A CGI wonder, AMEE morphs between different predatory poses - human and panther. AMEE was actually designed for the military - and a hard landing on the planet only brings up her darker side. On the team's own side (barely evening out the odds) are a few surprises - mostly involving salvaging barely usable technology from the few probes that mankind successfully landed on Mars.
This is a pretty good film - Val Kilmer plays a surprisingly likeable guy, though the film is largely paint-by numbers. There aren't that many surprises here (like the order in which the team members die off). The film actually does less to surprise than simply suspend your belief (you'd think that with the money they'd spent on the mission and its importance for the survival of humanity, the planners would have screened out nut-jobs like Pettengill; with all their high-tech, none of the team detect oxygen until they crack their visors and find out they can breathe). It would have been cool to expand on the teams use of all that old earth-junk, but the script was obviously hobbled by the fact that so few missions actually made it to Mars (whether you're counting in metric or otherwise, the number is pretty small). Mars itself gets too little exposure in the script - with the planet approximating little more than a big desert with harsh weather - even though the red planet has much to offer. (Oxygen aside, what about the missing ozone layer that's supposed to shield our heroes from deadly UV rays? Even an oxygen-rich atmosphere means little when the atmospheric pressure at sea-level is thinner than what you'd get half a mile over Mt. Everest.) The flick works on its stars, mainly Kilmer, but also Carrie Moss and especially Tom Sizemore playing (again) the tough but tender no. 2 man (seen in "Private Ryan".) Definitely good for a Saturday night rental around February, when there's nothing spectacular enough to spend real money at the Multiplex. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 13, 2005 | | Summary | A typical modern day Sci-Fi...Kilmer & Sizemore make it work | Content
| Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore, who also starred together in Michael Mann's "HEAT", come together again for an exploration of Mars, based on the book by Robert E. Heinlein.
In the year 2050, Earth is on the verge of ecological disaster, and the Mars Terraforming Project has been created in hopes of making our neighboring planet habitable so that a colony of Earthlings might begin a new civilization there. But the project goes awry, and Commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) is put in charge of a rescue mission to set the system back on its feet.
Bringing along astronaut Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer) and scientists Dr. Quinn Burchenal (Tom Sizemore) and Dr. Bud Chantillas (Terrence Stamp), Bowman and her crew set out for Mars, but disaster strikes and the landing craft crashes into the red planet. The crew is stranded without communications as Bowman struggles to find a way to get them home; to make matters worse, the robot that was designed to serve and protect them has gone haywire, and is now attempting to hunt them down as prey.
Red Planet was originally to have been released as Mars, but the producers changed the title to avoid confusion with Mission to Mars, released earlier the same year. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 28, 2004 | | Summary | Surprisingly, not a dissappointment! | Content
| This movie is one of the best Science-Fiction movies ever! A wonderful performance from all of the actors and a great plot are definately a plus for this film. It has many other elements as well, like Action, Thrills and Mystery. Even if you're not he biggest sc-fi fan, I guarantee you'll love this film. I don't see why other people rate this movie so lowly. It's awesome! Great special effects too. |
| Rating | | | Date | November 25, 2004 | | Summary | Wasted Space | Content
| Sometimes Hollywood studios are so excited about an idea for a movie that they don't even care that another studio is making another film with the same premise at the same time. Unlike the volcanic adventures Dante's Peak (pretty good) and Volcano (really dumb), the competition to "conquer" the planet Mars in Red Planet and Mission To Mars saw no victor getting the spoils. Both of these films would make any god of war run for cover. In Red Planet's case, it's a convoluted mess that, despite some fine actors, never really takes off.
In the future, pollution and overpopulation are making the Earth uninhabitable. Humanity's only hope is to colonize the planet Mars by using algae to produce oxygen, but when the algae mysteriously disappear, a group of astronauts are sent to Mars on a mission to learn why. The spaceship, led by Commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss-in pre Matrix mode), is preparing to land when a sudden emergency forces them to crash on the planet without supplies or equipment. The survivors, including systems engineer Gallagher (Val Kilmer) and scientists Burchenal (Tom Sizemore) and Pettengil (Simon Baker), have to figure out how to return to their ship while also learning the truth about the missing algae. As if things weren't bad enough, they have to avoid AMEE, the ship's malfunctioning robot who is trying to kill them all.
Directed by Anthony Hoffman, Red Planet, suffers from an already weak story made worse by its lifts from the sci-fi classic 2001 A Space Odyssy. I don't know about you, but the killer robot AMEE, with the benevolent neutral sounding voice seems like a retread of Hal. What little suspense there is in the film is watered down by typical plot leaps that occur when the writer gets stuck. Not even Terrence Stamp as Chantilas, the voice of reason can save this dud There's no spark between Moss and Kilmer at all. I could go on....
The DVD has 15 minutes worth of deleted scenes, that wouldn't have made things any better, had they been a part of the final cut. Cast/Director career filmogaphies tops off the lack luster disc.
Red Planet will have you seeing red for being such a waste of time, money and talent.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 30, 2004 | | Summary | MAROONED AND MAUDLIN | Content
| RED PLANET has some visually stunning effects, and that's about it. The plot is so contrived and incoherent, one wonders what the movie is all about. The bookend narration by Carrie Ann Moss sounds like something a high schooler would write in a creative writing class, and the performances are all average. Not one performance stands out, and that's a shame with such a great cast, although I've failed to see how Val Kilmer has even sustained a career. Benjamin Bratt is annoying; Terence Stamp is like Peter Cushing on Valium, and the usually impressive Simon Baker (TV's Guardian) is saddled with a thankless role as a "traitor" without any underlying premise.
RED PLANET is ultimately a yawner. It seems like it takes forever to get to the movie's point, and the Martian bugs are neat, but what in the heck are they doing?
Visual eye candy but a lightweight concoction otherwise. |
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