Red Planet (2000)

People seem to be of two minds about this movie: Either the science, plot, acting, and effects are quite good, or they totally suck. (One-star and five-star reviews abound on Netflix.) I think this comes down to whether they flunked science or flunked the arts (or are just science fiction purists): If they love the arts but don't get science, it's all too intellectual, dry, or boring for them; on the other hand, if they love science but don't understand story (or dislike any fiction that's not "hard" science fiction), they'll find every flaw -- and by the rules of logic, even one flaw makes something, well, flawed. Loving both science and story, however, I find Red Planet to be not only better than Mission to Mars but one of the best-balanced science fiction movies around. The science is imaginatively conceived and elegantly expressed: the computer displays, the thin-substrate heads-up displays for real-time mapping or aerial photography or medical diagnoses, the spacesuit designs, the AMEE articulating robot. The special effects are well done; AMEE going military is quite memorable. The plot takes a deliberate pacing based on the challenges (you can't run on low oxygen) but keeps moving with a sense of urgency. Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer, Terence Stamp, Tom Sizemore, and the rest of the crew have a tangible synergy that makes for a compelling desire to see how it ends. (I especially like how sympathetically Terence Stamp's character accommodates spirituality with science, and how Val Kilmer's character is affected by him.) Yes, there is a deadly attrition in this deadly environment, but how is this different from what a real mission-in-jeopardy would be like? Spare me the cynical armchair reviewers; the characters in this film have The Right Stuff. They are at their best when they show how science means having a sense of adventure, and that accomplishing a mission such as theirs is the most important thing, more important even than their individual lives. This movie in a way is a paean and testament to every astronaut who has broken, and will break, free from the surly bonds of earthly gravity. Ad astra! Five stars.