Red Planet (PG-13, 2001)

RED PLANET takes place in 2050, when the Earth is in very bad shape. A team heads to Mars to make it inhabitable for humans. But the experiment goes awry, and another team is sent on a rescue mission. Commander Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss) and her rescue team (Val Kilmer, Terrence Stamp, and Tom Sizemore) wind up crash landing, leaving them stranded on an isolated planet where nothing they encounter is what they expected, and the technology that was supposed to help them turns against them in a deadly way. Their commander might be dead, and chances are slim to none that anybody gets back home alive. If they do get back home, they better come back with a way to save humanity, or it's still curtains.

Red Planet won't blow you away, but it is an exciting diversion, especially if your family likes space adventures. Perhaps the movie's best quality is that it doesn't come off as an overblown Hollywood blockbuster, with an overemphasis on booming music flashy effects. The effects are great--especially the robot turned guerilla warrior--but the movie slows down when it needs to, letting viewers feel what the characters are going through.

The actors bring nuances and strong character traits to scenes that could have come out of an independent sci-fi film (albeit one with a big budget). Clever moments ease the doomsday tension and don't draw attention to themselves as "funny one-liners." Some of the dialogue is simplistic and some of the plot elements are predictable, but the by-the-numbers elements add up to a surprisingly down-to-earth space movie.

Studio: Warner Bros.
Director: Anthony Hoffman
Cast: Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer
Genre: Science Fiction
Run time: 106 minutes
Theatrical release: March 27, 2001
DVD release: March 27, 2001
MPAA Rating: PG-13
MPAA explanation: sci-fi violence, brief nudity and language