Red Planet

Dilution

Red Planet has a handful of interesting ideas, but doesn't provide an entertaining vehicle for them. There are glimpses of science and philosophy thrown in, but the movie focuses instead on tension between the characters and false crises. Most of these aren't sympathetic characters, so the battle is lost before it's begun. They kill off the best actor in the bunch at the first opportunity, but only after a solid minute of lines that are shamelessly copied from every other stock script. The movie's desparation to maintain interest is evident in the Carrie-Anne Moss shower scene. Why stop there? I can imagine a version in which she goes nude in the solitude of the ship. The other potential boredom- staver takes the form of a CGI robot that could clearly benefit from a reading of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. What kind of robot is programmed with a survival instinct that surpasses its function of helping the good guys?

Nitpicking Spoilers!

• AMEE the robot settles for injuring Burchenal. The script gives a line about guerrilla tactics. Since AMEE knows how many of them there are, she should know that the war is won after killing these three. There is no benefit in slowing down two by wounding a third when all three are easy targets. AMEE's survival will be pretty pointless, since there won't be anyone else to kill for quite some time.
• Speaking of AMEE's fighting skill, she adequately demonstrates at the beginning that she can compensate quickly for human movement. How, then, can Gallagher get out of the way quick enough at the end?
• Gallagher kills AMEE by lighting the excess rocket fuel. The flame and the robot are trapped under the parachute. Shouldn't the fire die out quickly with the parachute stifling the influx of oxygen? Shouldn't a military-grade robot like that be a little more fireproof?
• The crew salvages some radio equipment from Sojourner, the cute little six-wheeled robot that NASA sent to Mars in 1997. I know consumer-grade modems have speakers on them so the user can hear the dial tone, dialing, and handshaking. What's the point of having a speaker on a device that will operate in a vacuum? Even if we accept that Sojourner used an off-the-shelf modem, what need does any modem have for a microphone?

Credit

It wouldn't be fair to slam the movie and then neglect the good bits. Most of the scenes with Carrie-Anne Moss were made watchable by her presence, and her good bits in particular. I liked a few of the gadgets, including the PDAs with rollaway screens. I was amazed that Santen didn't come back to life. He was thrown over the cliff, but we never actually saw him die. I thought they'd surely resurrect him at least once.