Welcome to Bob's Movie Reviews for
Sci-Fi Movies,
your online source for information on everything imaginative.
Red Planet
Red Planet is about a future where scientists have sent a specially
designed series of different algae to Mars in an effort to give the
red planet a breathable atmosphere. The earth is in serious
trouble with overpopulation and dwindling resources. Terraforming
Mars is the perfect solution. All goes well until suddenly the
algae begins to mysteriously disappear. A mission to Mars is
executed to determine what has happened to the algae. The ship
gets there and suffers a disaster at the hands of an unexpected
massive solar flare. While the Captain works on saving the ship
the rest of the crew leaves in a drop ship to the planet's surface in
case of further disaster. With the crew is a robot that has been
loaned to the crew by the military and when the drop ship suffers its
own difficulty the robot is separated from the crew and goes on the
defensive. Now not only do the crew have to deal with the rigors
of being on the inhospitable Martian surface but there is a homicidal
robot after them.
Red Planet is an effective three pronged story with the Captain
trying to fix the ship, the crew trying to complete their mission and
find out what happened to the algae, and the fight against the amok
robot. The acting is sort of flat considering the casting of
Carrie Anne Moss, and Val Kilmer, who generally do good work.
The script has some good ideas but tends to fall back on
Hollywood and science fiction cliches such as a treacherous crew
member, and its a certainty that not everyone will die. Still
there is some fair characterisation, a good musical score, and there
is enough new and interesting to make the movie stand out. It is
definitely a good rental movie and may have even been worth the full
price of theatre admission.
(
Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)
All ideas, opinions, and information are from the reviewer
and are not representative of any company or group involved with the creators
and/or staff of the materials being reviewed.