Stranded

These days sci-fi tends to be all about action, gleaming spaceships, and aliens with wrinkly tentacles. No fantasy, no mystery, no bizarre unknown. Action flicks or relationship dramas set in space. That's not my idea of sci-fi.

This film takes its time. We spend a good chunk of the film watching the crew crash-landed on Mars without enough supplies, trying to figure out what to do. It takes a long time before we get to the mystery, and for once, we don't get to see the dwarf behind the curtain. If this were a Hollywood film, all of Stranded would be cut down to about 15 minutes, and the rest of the film would be an action film where the surviving crew are being chased by some lame baddie, maybe a crew member gone mad, or some rusty martian janitorial robot with a few screws loose.

I like the film. Make no mistake, it has a lot of BAD things about it. A few awful casting choices, amateurish directing, and absolutely awful voice-over narration. The first five minutes are so awful you wouldn't believe it. But once the film gets underway, there's enough good to it to let you ignore the bad.

If you like Hollywood sci-fi, don't watch this film because you'll absolutely hate it. But if you like films such as 2001, Solaris, and THX-1138, then you might want to give this film a chance. By no means is it up to the standards of such masterpieces, but it's far more memorable and interesting than any other Mars-flick made in recent years.

Once you get past the first 20 minutes, which contains the worst of the acting and the expository dialogue that invariably that starts with "As you know, Mars/the spaceship/our oxygen supply...," this is an enjoyable and intelligent movie. Actually, with the proviso that this is indeed science fiction with regard to the more fantastic elements, they made a better fist of the science and technology than any of the Hollywood blockbusters about Mars. The production values are surprisingly high, although real space nerds will notice that the interior of the mars landing spaceship bears more than a passing resemblance to a shuttle mock up and Blake's 7 fans will notice the wandering-down-the-same-corridor-with-different-lighting trick.

A seven-man crew of international specialists formed by Commander Andre Vishniac (José Sancho); engineer Luca Baglioni (Vincent Gallo); doctor Jenny Johnson (Maria de Medeiros); astrobiologist Fidel Rodrigo (Joaquim de Almeida); pilot Susana Sánchez (María Lidón); geologist Herbert Sagan (Danel Aser); and pilot Lowell (Johnny Ramone) travels to Mars to explore the planet. On the arrival, Lowell stays in orbit in the mothership while the crew lands on Mars. However their spacecraft crashes on the planet and Vishniac breaks his neck. They learn that they are stranded in Mars and Lowell returns to Earth to bring a rescue team. Soon Luca calculates the oxygen, water and supplies and concludes that there are enough for only two of them survive until an eventual rescue team comes to Mars twenty six months later. They decide that the engineer Luca and doctor Jenny should be the ones to stay in the spacecraft due to their specialties. Susan, Rodrigo and Sagan wear their spacesuits to explore the planet and die. But while there is life, there is hope.

"Stranded" is an anguishing low-budget sci-fi developed in very slow pace that builds up tension. The plot is realistic and the pragmatic Luca is a hateful but coherent character. The beautiful cinematography shows the arid landscape of Mars as a hopeless environment for human life. The surprising conclusion gives hope to the survivors to be rescued one day alive. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

I originally rented this movie as something to watch while my mom and sister watched "Must Love Dogs" in the other room. Within ten minutes I found myself preferring the chick flick. The opening scene of the movie was all I needed to realize I had just wasted five and a half bucks. The film begins with a newscast in which a reporter sets the scene for the rest of the film. A good idea, right? Except that the reporter delivers in a deadpan. He says, "This is a historic moment" in a voice you'd probably expect to hear in a lecture on earwax. The rest of the movie follows this pattern to the point where I wanted to throttle the lead actress while screaming, "Have you even READ the script?" In short, I've seen beer commercials with better acting, better writing, better special effects, and better story lines.

I wish there were more science-fiction films like this one being made today.

I can't understand all the negativity towards this flick! Here's a modest little film that doesn't depend on huge special effects and gratuitous action sequences in order to tell a cracking little story, with enough twists and turns to keep an old sci-fi fan like myself guessing until the end.

The premise is certainly nothing we haven't had before (think "Mission to Mars", or "Robinson Crusoe on Mars"), but this particular storyline was dense and well paced, no loose ends, everything for a purpose.

The other aspect of the movie I liked was the atmosphere that it managed to build through, what I think, are all the things that people have criticized it for.

It had a sense of calm, other-worldliness, to which the non-US accents, and at times off-beat delivery by some of the actors contributed. The dialog is more naturalistic than in a big-budget Hollywood action sci-fi flick, and this may be why some people found it "weird".

Some of the dialog was a bit corny, but I think deliberately - a little tip of the hat to earlier tales of that ilk (one of the characters conspicuously starts quoting from "John Carter of Mars" at one point, and we feel we're in an entirely different movie for a moment)

The sedate narration from the main actress, the gorgeous locations shots, and even the interior of the Martian complex with its mysterious technology, all contributed to a dream-like and alien quality invoked by this movie.

Great fun!

Rating - 10 out of 10.