OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: Unoriginal sci-fi, but a decent popcorn movie.

Details: Starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle. Rated PG for sci-fi violence and mild language. 1 hour, 53 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: "Mission to Mars" does not boldly go where no movie has gone before. You can spend much of its two hours ticking off its cinematic swipes: "The Abyss," "Contact," "Close Encounters" and, especially, "2001: A Space Odyssey" and its sequel. A sci-fi patchwork, it doesn't score any points for originality. But directed with workmanlike skill by Brian De Palma, it'll give you an enjoyable tour of the Red Planet, complete with some thrills and sharp computer effects.

Actually, getting there is more fun than the arrival. Make that arrivals. Set in the year 2020, "Mission" ignites with a backyard barbecue for NASA members readying for the first manned flight to Mars. We meet Commander Woody Blake (Tim Robbins); his wife and colleague, Terri (Connie Nielsen); mission commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle); chief scientist Phil (Jerry O'Connell); and, not least, Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise). Jim was once slated to head the flight, but the illness and death of his wife has sidelined him from the expedition.

De Palma introduces us to the principals with a tracking shot that zigs all over the yard. Luckily, after this look-at-me sequence, he lays off the kind of hyperstylization that turned some of his films into self-conscious disasters. (R.I.P., "Snake Eyes.")

The first half-hour of "Mission" feels a little shaky, leaping from banal party patter directly to Mars 13 months later. (The transition feels as if a chunk of the movie was cut to keep it under two hours). A four-person landing party is already long settled on the planet, exploring and taking samples. When their simple X-ray of a peculiar mountain range results in an explosive reaction (a cross between a volcano and hurricane), the astronauts remaining in space determine to go to Mars themselves and rescue any survivors.

It's here that "Mission" hits its best part. As the backup team (Sinise, Robbins, Nielsen and O'Connell) nears the planet, an encounter with some tiny space pebbles leads to a breach of the hull ... which kicks off a chain reaction of mistakes that sends the astronauts outside their module for a risky spacewalk.

Recalling Keir Dullea's quietly desperate attempt to retrieve his partner in "2001," it's a white-knuckle sequence. It's made even more unnerving by the crew's hushed, professional analysis of their life-or-death dilemma.

The film's final reel is pleasant, if low on thrills by comparison. It's a special-effects-driven finale that suggests that John Gray is right: Men are from Mars. But guess what: So are women. The movie's visuals range from decent to eerily beautiful, notably a distant view of an approaching Martian windstorm. The movie also throws in some witty product placements, making Dr Pepper and M&Ms vital to a couple of plot twists. Apparently Tang was considered too old-hat 20th century.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service