As in ”Apollo 13,” Gary Sinise gets to watch all his pals go off into space without him. In ”Mission to Mars,” he’s Jim, a morose astronaut pining for his dead wife, and his depression makes him an unlikely candidate for the Mars mission. ”He’s good,” explains Cmdr. Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), ”but not for this.”
All the characters — the cast includes Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen and an uncredited Armin Mueller-Stahl — are nice-guyish and cooperative, so much so that they’re nondescript. The director, Brian De Palma, catches them in noble profile so often that you wonder when the commemorative coins are going to be issued.
”Mission to Mars” takes off with a splash of wit, with the ominous rumbles of a rocket launched toward the heavens. That rocket explodes into a spray of confetti as the camera pulls back to show a backyard barbecue and the happy NASA crew discussing the coming Mars flight.
Mr. De Palma loves to dance with the medium to show that any move, from a quick twirl to an athletic arabesque, can be immediately achieved. But what’s not at his disposal this time is his ability to mix tones. ”Mission to Mars” is a plea for understanding, a call for brotherhood. It’s as much of a New Age paperweight as ”Contact,” Robert Zemeckis’s film about finding an otherworldly intelligence, but Mr. De Palma is emotionally lost in the stars.
”Mission to Mars” could be called Mr. De Palma’s ”Abyss.” And in turn, that James Cameron opus was a brine-soaked attempt to work through the themes of Stanley Kubrick’s ”2001: A Space Odyssey,” but with a benevolent perspective. In ”The Abyss,” an alien intelligence extended a tendril of friendship.
Mr. De Palma soars off into space toward the same end, with a group of writers including Graham Yost of ”Speed” and writers with producers’ credits like Ted Tally (”Silence of the Lambs”) and David Goyer (”Blade”), although much of the picture feels as if it came from the director. It can’t take too many people to come up with lines like ”Those stresses have never been tested in space!”
It’s been a long time since such a grandiloquent souffle of majesty and silliness refused to rise on the big screen: probably not since ”The Abyss,” in which Mr. Cameron’s deepest desire was to have audiences discover he was not just a genre filmmaker. Mr. De Palma’s gift is an ability to bend the generally rigid constraints of genre to suit his needs by inflating the emotional content of thrillers and film noir so that you choke on your laughter or are simultaneously touched and frightened. He has been accused of being inexpressive, but his problem here is that he is too enraptured by his subject. There’s a follow-your-bliss dreaminess here that wouldn’t be out of place at a Deepak Chopra seminar or on a Mannheim Steamroller album.
The visual design is spectacular, and the scenes on the Martian surface look so real that the picture could have been made on location. A holographic sequence detailing the evolutionary link between Earth and Mars is staggeringly well staged. Even in those instances, the movie is undermined by Mr. De Palma’s uncharacteristic wet-eyed awe. He introduces a standard-issue alien with an elongated frame and then goes that cliche one better. A single tear rolls down its — well, I guess you’d call it its cheek — and there it stands, as if it were a Martian Iron Eyes Cody.
There doesn’t seem to be an original moment in the entire movie, and the score is so repetitive that it could have been downloaded directly from EnnioMorricone.com. All this addled sincerity comes from trying to create wonderment for adults, growing out of Jim’s rediscovery of his humanity after he is later recruited for a rescue mission. Mr. Sinise’s thoughtful patience in this situation makes him appear to be a little sluggish, though not as sluggish as the movie, which narratively seems to be taking place in zero gravity, where each minute seems to last an additional 30 seconds. In space no one can hear you snore.
Mission to Mars (2000)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O’Connell, Peter Outerbridge, Kavan Smith, Jill Teed, Elise Neal, Kim Delaney, Marilyn Norry, Lynda Boyd, Patricia Harras
Screenplay by: Lowell Cannon, Jim Thomas
Production Design by: Ed Verreaux
Cinematography by: Stephen H. Burum
Film Editing by: Paul Hirsch
Costume Design by: Sanja Milkovic Hays
Set Decoration by: Lin MacDonald
art Direction by: Andrew Neskoromny, Thomas Valentine
Music by: Ennio Morricone
MPAA Rating: PG for sci-fi violence and mild language.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: March 10, 2000
Visits: 143
