I remember Mission to Mars and Red Planet seemed to come out around the same time, and I found myself more interested in the De Palma film because it had to do with the ‘face on mars’ and the possibility of life on that distant planet. And who doesn’t love that idea?

Red Planet, despite some shoddy visual effects sequence does have a strong cast, Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Terrence Stamp, Benjamin Bratt and Simon Baker. Set in the not too distant future, Mars-1 is setting off for the red planet to make sure it is ready for colonies as Earth is dying.

Upon arrival, things go badly, the captain, Bowman (Moss) is left aboard ship, trying to get things running, while the rest of the crew escapes to the planet, only to find the greenhouse hub they were expecting is non-existent, somehow destroyed.

As the survivors try to find a way to survive and perhaps rejoin Bowman on the ship, problems are escalated by the discovery of why the algae and greenhouse have been destroyed, and the mission’s robot, AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Evaluation and Evasion) has gone rogue and is hunting them.

Gallagher (Kilmer) is a tech, referred to constantly as a space janitor, and apparently the low man on the totem pole, but he also seems to be the smartest. The group has to work to find a way to survive, and while there are some surprises, the story ends up being fairly basic.

There are a lot of fun ideas at work here, but none of them get enough exploration or screen time to be as engaging as they should be.

There is some wonderful location work with colour grading and tinting to make them look like Mars. I like the cast, but I never found myself captured by the story. It’s honestly not as fun as it could have been.

And despite the flaws of Mission to Mars, I prefer that one to this, though Kilmer is always a welcome presence onscreen.

The visual effects are truly horrendous in a number of sequences, including while Bowman is working to save the ship, and a lot of the stuff with AMEE. It was glaring at the time, it’s even more so now. It can jar you completely out of the film.

This one, I think tried to do too much, and while it seems like a cross between Mission to Mars and The Martian, there’s a reason this one has kind of faded away over the past few years.

I do like the cast, but man, I already forgot half of the things I saw in this one.