Later, there's a stunning cut from Sinise's imagining that the footprint he makes in a child's sandbox is the first human footprint on Mars (his dreamed-of destiny, thwarted by his wife's death) to a remote-controlled toy truck transmitting pictures of the rocky red Mars surface.Īs in most De Palma films, technology is never insulating it never saves his characters from the pain and loss dredged up by the mysteries they use it to solve. In the opening shot, we watch a launched rocket that turns out to be a child's toy. Dr Pepper and M&M's are just some of the tools they employ to puzzle out the problems. The movie's astronaut-heroes are all-American versions of the gadgeteer heroes of past De Palma films, using technology to solve the mysteries confronting them.
(The team is rounded out by Jerry O'Connell's Bill, the resident young hotshot.) How they get to Mars, and what they find there, present the astronauts with their real struggle: maintaining their bonds of loyalty and humanity in the midst of this new world. He and his wife, Maggie (Kim Delaney of "NYPD Blue"), were supposed to fulfill that role before her death. That has its own painful associations for Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise). The team's commanders, Woody and Terri (Tim Robbins, in one of his best performances, and whip-smart Swedish actress Connie Nielsen), are the first married couple on a manned mission. The story follows a rescue team sent to investigate an ominous, staticky transmission from Don Cheadle's Luke Graham, one of a group of astronauts who'd gone to Mars earlier to establish a base camp. More than any filmmaker now working, De Palma communicates his meanings almost entirely in visual terms. A critic who can't recognize the visual rhapsody of this movie (and I'm not talking about the special effects) is about as trustworthy as a blind dance critic. I can imagine someone liking movies and not liking "Mission to Mars," but essentially I agree with White. That's the kind of overstatement that offers the most direct route to the truth.
"It can be said with certainty that any reviewer who pans does not understand movies, let alone like them," White wrote.
Last March, as Brian De Palma's "Mission to Mars" was being savaged by nearly every critic in the country, Armond White, the passionate film critic for the New York Press, threw down the gauntlet.
Touchstone widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio)Įxtras: Making-of featurette, animation-to-scene comparison, audio commentary, visual-effects analysis, more Starring Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Tim Robbins
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