Crimson Force

I'm new to IMDb but I'm starting to notice something.

It seems some movies are getting a lot of bad reviews trashing them but then a few that praise it. I'm noticing a pattern to this, however. The movies which are receiving some high praise are all unquestionably awful. Movies like Crimson Force are so bad that I can't imagine anyone truly enjoying them! None of my Sci-Fi fan buddies like it.

I believe it comes down to having people either paid to write good reviews for such movies or people who worked on such movies writing reviews to praise them. It's the only explanation. Look at the reviews here. Most people hate it but there are a few who think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. No middle ground. That doesn't make sense for sincere reviews.

Crimson Force is a frighteningly bad movie. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Conceptually it's moronic and a slap in the face to Sci-Fi fans. Save your time.

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.

The script appears to have been written by someone who mixed up his notes in Screen writing 101 and used everything s/he'd been warned NOT to use. The characters are 2-dimensional and predictable. The conventions are as hackneyed as they come. And the editor must have been gone through several bags of Pixie Stix before firing up the equipment, because the cuts are fast, furious and distract from, rather than enhance, the story.

The latter may be a blessing in disguise, come to think of it.

The music is cobbled together from a variety of sources, including some that 'World of Warcraft' players should quickly recognise.

If this review is uninspired, it only reflects this plodding, pointless waste of film. It is an utterly regrettable enterprise.

Well, really what else is there to say? It was bad...REAL bad. During the exceptionally overacted dialog, I kept waiting for a punchline. Surely this had to be a comedy. But no, every line was delivered with such melodramatic sincerity, that I realized that it was just bad. C. Thomas Howell, in the years since we have seen him, has apparently attended the George Takei School of Acting, or non-acting, as the case may be. He was horrible. I have to ask myself and fellow viewers, when they make a movie like this, do the actors know it's that bad as they say each line that's horrifically worse than the last one? Is it that hard to find quality work in Hollywood? Yikes! I'll keep my day job, which by the way, is not as a professional movie critic.