russmillerwy

This flick is a little like "Fort Apache: The Bronx" meets "Apocolypse Now". It is almost TOO gritty and too intense to be realistic. However, it is so well done and so original that it's very worthwhile. Especially enjoyable as black comic relief are Nicolas Cage's unbalanced partners Ving Rhames and Tom Sizemore. Film deals with heavy subjects like euthanasia, suicide, and drug addiction. Not for children.

Reality Bites is an example of exactly the type of shallow cliches it pretentiously tries to satirize. From the opening pot smoking graduation party right through to the predictably dull ending the lame, witless attempts to be cleverly ironic just keep on coming at you like so many "Good Morning, Grant" cue cards. Excellent cast wasted on mediocre script.

Red Planet succeeds where so many sci fi flicks have failed. It has the high concept special effects of 2001 without the tedium. It has realistic, tense action scenes without needing a contrived fantasy war with evil aliens like in Starship Troopers. It has spiritual and emotional underpinnings that don't bog it down in the mushy sentimentality of Mission to Mars. The characters are human and flawed without becoming the helplessly pathetic neurotics of Operation Ganymede. Best of all it has brains, but you don't need to be a graduate student in physics to understand it.

Without giving too much away the plot runs like this: Earth is decaying from environmental pollution. Mankind must colonize or die out. So Mars is terraformed with polar ice melting nuclear detonations and oxygen producing algae. Suddenly the algae disappear. A ship, this ship, is sent to investigate. Nothing at all goes as expected and Murphy's Law becomes the norm.

If you like Star Trek, you'll love Red Planet. This movie may not go into excruciating detail to describe the science involved, but it is based on hard science. The characters can't simply blast their way from one problem to the next. They have to think their way out. Human frailties turn out to be just as dangerous as the planet's inhospitable climate. Courage, resourcefulness, and quick thinking take precedence over laser beams.

I had a great time watching this. See it on the big screen before it's gone!