Mars - The Dark Secret

"Mars" - a very hard name to carry off for what is at very best a "B" movie. After all, Mars is dramatic territory explored before by Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick (among many others).

The writers of this turkey should have stayed home. It's no crime to realize your limitations and work within them - and these guys might have a promising future in the porn industry if they apply themselves. As serious screenwriters they seem outclassed.

Olivier Gruner fails to impress the viewer as the protagonist Caution Templer, a lawman who must defend himself from attackers while investigating the mysterious death of his brother (also a lawman) on the Martian outpost Alpha City. (Fans of French science-fiction cinema will recall the classic "Alphaville," whose protagonist was named "Lemmy Caution.")

The director and screenwriters have Caution Templar bulling through all sorts of unsocial encounters with bad guys with nary a scratch... and actor Gruner's delivery is such that calling it "wooden" is unkind to wood.

Other action film actors' "wooden delivery" is leavened by compensating features. Next time, Olivier, please watch a LOT of Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns and the "Dirty Harry" oeuvre, and see how HE gets away with it.

Shari Belafonte turns in a better performance, but her character is a dim copy of Frances Sternhagen's frontier quack in "Outland" - without the dramatic scope of the original character. Rae Dawn Chong joins the throng of name actors who sleepwalk through their parts - whether this was the fault of the part she was given or her own acting isn't clear, because trying to inject some sort of animation into this script might have opened the cast to charges of overacting. And they're the TALENT in this picture.

The plot's uninspiring in the way of nearly every French science-fiction film except for "The Fifth Element." I generally felt robbed of the time I spent watching this turkey. It shares all the weaknesses of the films from which it cribs, but shares NONE of their high spots.

Your mileage may vary if you like this sort of film. It sure has enough action to carry the attention of a hard-core fan of slasher sci-fi - say, if you thought the face-suckers and gut-ripping scenes were the high points of the "Alien" movies. If so, feel free to indulge, there's plenty of that stuff there to keep you happy.

Acting energy with a poor script, talent is a terrible thing to waste. This movie had two typical plot lines with no surprises. The main character starts off with an aggressiveness that promises a good movie, but it never goes anywhere. If you really have nothing better to do (snowed in for days), then it might be alright to watch this one once . ..

Do you know what this movie reminded me of, Chuck Norris on steriods and trapped on Mars. That's all. The plot did not make any sense what-so-ever. The movie started right away with no explaination of what the story was about, only a guy running through a tunnel. It sounded like this guy was having sex by all of the panting that was going on. Then his brother shows up, this Caution fellow, never smiles (not once), and then starts the Chuck Norris on steriods bit. This movie had nothing to do with Sci-Fi. It should have been listed under Action not Drama/Sci-Fi. Usually in Drama's you can figure out what the movie is somewhat about. One other thing upset me, was that Caution had this sidekick, who reminded me of the mouse in those cartoons that would circle the bigger/stronger mouse again and again and say stuff like, "what are we going to do boss?, are we going to hurt..." stuff like that.

My advice, save your coins. Go buy a soda, it'll feel better in the end.

MARS is probably the most boring film you can find starring Oliver Gruner. NEMESIS was an okay movie (despite it being made by Albert Puyn), but this little "action"-movie is very boring.

The story is stolen from all other Mars-movies, and is of course about that evil corporation that has a mining enterprise on the planet. Gruner is to find out what happened to his brother, who was murdered two days ago. And that's about as exciting it gets...

The bad-guys have VERY disappointing dialogue and the script is poorly written. The main idea is not at all bad. The production could have been so much better with some re-writes. The cast isn't necessary all bad either - especially Lee de Broux (RoboCop) is nice to see, even though he doesn't have much to work with.

Gruner himself isn't all that bad either, but the lack of a good script, the bad directing, the VERY bad sets and props and especially the terrible dialogue is making this film a very boring and very bad movie. Yes, it is in the league of Creepozoids and Timewalker.

I give this film 1 out of 10.

It took three sittings to get through, but I made it through this low-budget sci-fi kick-boxing thriller. The two elements that really killed this film are the script and Gabrield Dell Jr's channeling of Rob Schneider (on crack). Mars is so full of clichés that the cast should have been given awards for keeping straight faces throughout the production. And Dell's character is so loud, obnoxious, and unfunny, that the single best line in the film, and perhaps it's most dramatic moment, occurs when Greunier tries to get him to shut up.

Shari Belafonte is beautiful and Olivier Greunier looks good too, but good looks don't help a bad script. Some of the acting is poor, but mostly its the absurd script that makes good acting almost inconceivable. Belafonte carries her lines better than the rest of the cast. Greunier is pretty good at looking apathetic, angry and detached, but I have to say that the whole casting non-actors as silent unemotional heroes thing is really wearing thin.

Knowing how low budget this film was, and knowing a little about how it was made, I have to say that the production values are really not that bad, and the directing is actually pretty good. The director, a tenth degree black-bekt and Undefeated Florida Full-Contact Heavyweight Karate Champion, has made some absolutely hideous films (The Watchers http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096425/ being the worst example), but Mars is a big improvement over his earlier works. The film keeps a reasonable pace and doesn't try to do very much with what it doesn't have (i.e. a useful script).

Though I just finished watching this last night, I am struggling to remember the plot. Greunier is Caution Templer - a "Keeper" - a kind of corporate intelligence officer. His brother, also a keeper, has been murdered on Mars, where the company has a mining interest. Almost as soon as he gets to Mars to investigate, he connects with Belafonte, who has just made a startling and troublesome discovery, and people start trying to kill them both. There really isn't much more too it.

I recommend this film for kick-boxing fans, and would give it a very mild recommendation of low budget sci fi fans.