In the year 2020, a NASA mission to Mars encounters a mysterious phenomenon that wipes out the crew. A rescue mission (Gary Sinise, wearing too much eyeliner, Tim Robbins, Connie Nielsen and Jerry O’Connell) is sent to search for the one possible survivor (Don Cheadle). Once there, they encounter strange messages emanating from a giant metallic face buried in Mars’s craggy soil. I won’t reveal more except to say that whoever designed the spindly, cartoonish great-great-granddaughter of the “Close Encounter” aliens should be sent to bed without dinner.
Still, this is no ordinary bomb. It’s a gorgeous bad movie, the folly of a great visual stylist. De Palma, relishing the optical possibilities of a weightless spacecraft and a barren Red Planet, pulls off one dizzyingly elegant camera move after another. Great care has gone into the sets, the FX, the soundtrack, the lighting. At its best, this “mission” can cast a dreamy, hypnotic spell. Too bad movies have to have a story. And people talking. It would have made a swell silent.
Mission to Mars
Disney
Open
