Hey folks, Harry here with Agent Orange taking a peek at DePalma's MISSION TO MARS. This is a film that I'm really really really looking forward to in that same... edgy kind of 'I Dooooon't know about this' way that I walk into most DePalma films. We don't have long to wait to see for ourselves... but till then, here's Agent Orange...
Hey Harry. Agent Orange here, with my now third scoop. Yay! With all the recent NASA screwups comes their latest one… lending their name to this movie! HAHAHA, I’m so funny. But seriously folks, I managed to kick and bite my way to a Mission to Mars screening, and like the loyal bitch I am to you, here I am reporting. This time the ‘suits’ didn’t even tell us to not tell anyone, so my conscience is clear! I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but a few little things shall be mentioned. For those who don’t know, here’ s the basic premise:
It’s the year 2020 (how typical), the world isn’t much different except for some neat cars, and oh yeah, man is going to Mars! In the first shot (a nice long typical DePalma tracking shot) we meet most of our heroes, Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle, Tim Robbins, Jerry O’Connel and others whose names I don’t know. Sinise’s wife is dead, he’s depressed, got kicked off the mission, so Cheadle and his team (3 red shirts, if you know what I mean) go up instead, get in trouble, red shirts get killed, and the others (Sinise, Robbins, Robbin’ wife, O’Connol) go up to rescue him, investigate what happened to Don’s crew, throw in some deaths and drama and action and stuff about the face on mars and you got yourself a movie. Simple enough.
Fortunately some of the weaker stuff is at the beginning and is over soon, like painfully non-subtle attempts at character developments and exposition, all very groan-worthy. Even the usually great Don Cheadle has some cheesy acting to do here (and didn’t Don used to be scrawny? The guy’s arms are BIG!). Things start picking up when, after landing on Mars, Don and the crew come in contact with some Mummy-esque sand FX, in a mildly exciting scene.
Anyways, for a thing by thing breakdown:
Acting: cheesy at times, but this is definitely a good ensemble who do their best with the material. Tim Robbins, whom as you can tell by his “and Tim Robbins” listing in the credits, doesn’t stick around for the entire movie, but makes it much better by just being there. His mere presence tends to lift a movie’s quality a little higher (Although, after Arlington Road, every time he creeps around a corner I expect him to turn into his cheesy bad guy character). Gary Sinise is good, and surprisingly, the lead lead (his is the only name before the title, at least in this cut). Kim Delaney, despite being in the opening credits, has only about one minute of screen time, all on videotape, since she’s Gary dead wife. Which is too bad, since she does make you care for the character and feel Sinise’s loss a little more than when at the beginning they were just talking about her and you didn’t have a face to put with the name. But that’s probably because she’s Kim Delaney, and you probably have to watch NYPD Blue to get it. Jerry O’ Connel is the comic relief with a few funny lines, and Armin Muehler-Stall (I must’ve butchered his name) has a small role and a few hard to understand lines.
Directing: DePalma is, as always, a good technical director, but lately he’s been just a gun for hire for projects that don’t seem too personal. Too bad. Technically the movie looks great, the pace is pretty good and it’s hardly ever boring.
FX: Not that much significant stuff… lots of Mars scenery, which looks great, lots of ships, which look good, lots of sand, which looks, well, like CG sand, and a face on Mars, which looks like, well, crap. But nothing too exciting. There is one pretty terrible effect…
SMALL SPOILER AHEAD
… the gang end up meeting an alien. And that alien looks terrible. It’s very cartoony CG, which got a kinda goofy reaction from the audience, giggles here and there. Me no likey. Sometimes a good old animatronic is better. And in this case, maybe there shouldn’t really have been an ‘alien’ at all, which you might understand once you see it. As the guy in the seat behind me commented about the alien (and most of the end), “they looked like they were on an Epcot Center ride.”
ACTION/SUSPENSE: good, good. Some good action scenes in the vain of Mission Impossible, like you just know these are the key scenes and some of the rest just feel like filler until you get to the next action set-piece. There’s about 3 or 4 good action pieces, including the search for/fixing of leaks inside the ship and the attempted rescue of Tim Robbins, which did have the audience on the edge of their seats.
PLOT: I’m tempted to say ‘blah,’ but I must admit there are some original (to film) ideas presented, they’re just done a bit cheesily. I know I keep using the word cheesy a lot, but it’s cheesy. Most characters aren’t very developed and many plot points and ‘discoveries’ depend on huge leaps of faith made by characters.
I haven’t even seen the trailer to it but I’m told it makes it look like a 2001 ripoff. I can only wish. Other than the spinning space station/ship (beautiful) and a couple of white, sterile interior scenes at the end, there are very few 2001 connections.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s probably a lot to like, if you like this sort of movie. There’s more than a few GORGEOUS trademark DePalma shots, especially around the space station, and a very charming zero gravity dance number, but in the end, it’s just another average DePalma movie. It feels a bit like Snake Eyes… you know there’s a good movie in there somewhere, it just never surfaces for too long. Grade: C
Well, back to the everyday grind of my consumer-driven life.
Agent Orange
