Red Planet [Blu-ray] [2000]

Yes, it' another pretty good film in a similar vein to The Martian - but for a film made in 2000, it's pretty impressive! A great cast including Val Kilmer, Benjamin Bratt and the beautiful Carrie Anne Moss, the storyline is good and it holds up well. Some pretty good visuals, very reminiscent of The Martian, yet this film was made some 15 years earlier! It's an enjoyable film that holds interest well. A nice evening film for Sci-Fi fans. Recommended.

This is pure adventure sci-fi, not designed to be taken seriously by anyone except perhaps its writers. Part scripted by schlockmeister Chuck Pfarrer, author of such 'junk food' (but fun) level movies as 'The Jackal' and 'Navy SEALs', this focuses on the fun over the believable, and comes out as a likeble and enjoyable no-brainer as a result. Val Kilmer's 'space janitor' is just along for the ride to fix stuff, when a mission is sent to find out why an attempt to make Mars habitable seems to be failing. There are the predictable Alpha-male personality clashes between the crew of the mission on their way to the planet, enlivened by a fun performance by Tom Sizemore, and Carrie Ann Moss as the mission commander. Once on the planet things get more exciting, as a disaster leaves the exploration crew coping with a crash landing in their planetary landing pod, and mission commander Moss fighting an inventive zero-gravity fire in the mission spacecraft above. Flashy effects and nice tech design make it all look glossy, and fixer Kilmer shows his worth both with common sense survival ideas, and comes in handy when loaned Marine navigation robot AMEE gets damaged in the crash and goes commando (not like that) on them. At this point the movie becomes more like a monster thriller, with the survivors trying to complete the mission as the panther-esque and gloriously sleek robot toys with them, and then hunts to kill in the alien Martian landscape.Luckily the movie doesn't run out of ideas there, as we get a nicely fun (but scientifically improbable) revelation about the terraforming effort, psychosis, paranoia, and even more survival challenges heaped into the mix.Red Planet tries hard not to stop running forwards at a heck of a pace, so that you don't have to stop and think about the cracks in its frequently shaky logic, and as such, if you can bring yourself to play along, it's a HIGHLY enjoyable romp with a cool killer robot, a fascinating landscape, and some truly enjoyable survival challenges, with Val making for a cool, likeable lead.

I really enjoyed this movie and I didn't expect to. I am very fond of SF in general when done well but (somewhat shallowly) I only bought this DVD because Carrie Anne Moss is acting in it and I'm rather fond of her too.The movie isn't perfect, there are some technical howlers (GATP for the DNA bases anyone?!) but the makers obviously tried very hard to make this quite authentic and plausible. Most of the science holds up and the technological extrapolation is first rate. I've seen reviews stating that the movie is 'slow'. Well if so then that's how I like them because the pacing seemed just right to me. Carrie Anne Moss plays her best role so far here and even Val Kilmer (never thought I'd say this) is effective and convincing. Some of the CGI is a little cheap but it's more than made up for by the rest which looks very nice. AIMEE the navigational robot is particularly well realised and a nice nod to SONY and their lion/dog/cat thing.There are several nods to '2001 - A Space Odyssey' which is fair enough and quite appropriate considering the release date of the movie. The most obvious reference is the Commander's (Moss) name: 'Bowman'.Don't get me wrong. This is still a fairly lightweight 'Hollywoodish' movie but it is one of the better SF films of recent years and thought provoking to some extent. The DVD has some unused scenes as extras but nothing more. The studio probably assumed that it wouldn't sell too well (I think the theatre release bombed) and didn't spend much money on it. Shame!