Crimson Force

This movie is dodgy, plain and simple. In some sequence you can easily tell that the characters are animated in-particularly the rock climbing shots. It wasn't even good animation. In another shot, the camera is all over the place. The camera man must has being shaking like mad. This is not acceptable in a modern day sci-fi flick but yet this movie was allowed to do it. Apart from that, the storyline is weak also. It all seemed like an episode of Stargate. The alien intrusion on Earths History, the staf like weapons and the dodgy looking crests here and their just gave the film a look of stargate rip-off which is just not on. Fair enough, originality is hard to get these days as almost all ideas have been done at some stage but to copy big elements so glaringly is the sign that the producers were half asleep when they were doing this picture. The acting was OK however but again not the best. Overall this film is a poor sci-fi flick so check out other sci-fi movies if you want to be entertained.

The year is 2037 and corporations are still running the planet Earth. Advised to abort the first human mission to the planet Mars, due to some spaceship problems, hard-nosed crew leader C. Thomas Howell (as Kyle Baskin) insists on landing anyway. David Flores and his crew survive shaky cameras and their very rough touchdown, but their spaceship needs repairs. As if that wasn't enough to worry about, they learn a traitor is present, intent on sabotaging the mission. The red planet looks deserted, but looks can be deceiving; there may be Martians lurking about. Not knowing what to do, Mr. Howell seems angry. We also follow handsome "Baywatch" lifeguard David Chokachi (as Nick Ambrose). The women are sexy. There is enough here to make good TV movie, but "Crimson Force" fails to put its scattered pieces together.

*** Crimson Force (6/4/05) David Flores ~ David Chokachi, C. Thomas Howell, Julia Rose, Terasa Livingstone

Don't accuse me of expecting "Chinatown" here, because I already know the Sci-Fi Chanell has limited means. That said, limited means are no reasonable excuse for limited imagination or vision.

So, it's the future again and one of the not so friendly corporations that control Earth has sent a mission to Mars (there have been quite a few if those lately) to find an everlasting and inexpensive power source. Naturally they crash land in an almost half-exciting, almost well-executed scene which displays good planning ruined by the usual weak CGI. Soon the crew start to die and we find out that one of the crew is a government spy and that Mars is not a dead planet.

Every movie this network makes is either a format genre flick we've seen a million times before or a blatant rip-off of a popular film. At first, "Crimson Force" looks like it's going to be an "Alien" rip-off with shades of "Total Recall". But then the crew enter a "pyramid" (quotes because it has five sides) and get caught up in a power struggle between the ruling classes of Mars's surviving inhabitants. I think we were meant to be reminded of "Dune", but since the sets are so obviously small, the costumes so inexpensive, and the population so sparse, it reminds one more of a sadder incarnation of the 30s "Flash Gordon" serials. The way the second half plays out you'll likely wish they'd just finished ripping off "Alien" and been done with it.

To pad the running time (since the Martian plot is not all the complicated as it's written), our pretty-boy hero Ambrose is given flashbacks which explain why he's conflicted about working for the corporation, which in turn are a set-up to a typical made-for-TV character choice. The results aren't exactly deep. Most of the characters come with a whole two dimensions, including C. Thomas Howell's unlikeable Captain, the two "babes", the guys with accents, and the single non-white male.

The film was not necessarily a bad idea. But an idea is only the beginning and a lot can (and did) go wrong along the way. Apart from the terrible effects and the constraints of the budget, there's the direction. This was advertised as some kind of epic, so the director tries to emphasize how big everything is (the spaceship, the pyramid, the interiors...), which unfortunately just reveals how small the sets really are. If they'd tried some location shooting for once the viewer might not suffer claustrophobia from watching these "epics".

One star for an okay idea, a second for reminding me that I could do it better.

Utter crap. A spaceship crashes and drags along a long skid path. Yet most systems still work on board and the craft stays in one piece - overhanging a precipice. They set out on an expedition to find a universal power source. They quickly find it and one of the crew can read the hieroglyphs written on it's surface. Inside they find the atmosphere is breathable. I deleted as this point - I could not bear to find the Martians speaking English and possessing American-style National Insurance cards. Dear God how thick can the writers/directors/producers be? Still it about the level of sophistication of the average 10 year old.

Is there a rating of minus stars that I can assign to this waste of time? Because awful is just too generous. Here is a more accurate description. Grade Z, jerked off and rated S for silly. Good science fiction does not have to be chained to scientific plausibility(hence the genre) However if the characters do not behave in a plausible fashion and the plot shows no imagination then we are left with a film like "Crimson Force". Another pathetic offering from the sci fi channel. Speaking of which who are they making these lame brained movies for. Certainly no one who wants to be entertained by intelligent science fiction. They must get the scripts for their movies from essays written in middle school.....wait come to think of it there I go being too generous again.