Good story that is easy to follow with suspense here and there and of course it takes place in space which is always exciting because there is so much we do not know. Here we are introduced to crews in space making a go of it and things go wrong but they also go right too. This has one of the most powerful endings in Science Fiction that I have come across. I rate it as follows: If a movie or scene in sci-fi manages to trigger your imagination and then engage it, ten we are getting maximum return on the concept and then some. That's what takes place here. The discussion to follow the movie afterwards with a friend would enlighten and entertain of itself. Enjoy Gary Sinese who is a solid actor earning his keep in trade. Go toward this movie and.....

Mission To Mars is about a failed Mars mission and the subsequent mission sent to rescue the possible survivors. By all accounts Mars is supposed to be a dead planet. But with the possibility now more strong that there is water on our moon, could Mars be as dead as it appears from earth given our greater powers of observation and recording data.

Don Cheadle leads the first Mars mission and it's to find out what's happened to him that Tim Robbins leads another. The rest of Robbins' four person team is Gary Sinise, Jerry O'Connell, and Connie Nielsen.

Sinise is the big question mark. He's had a lot of personal issues to deal with since the death of his wife, played in flashbacks by Kim Delaney. Director Peter Outerbridge gives him a reluctant OK for the rescue mission at the pleading of Tim Robbins. It turns out to be a fortuitous choice.

The desert of Jordan substituted for the landscape of Mars. Twenty years earlier The Martian Chronicles was shot in our Arizona desert so I'm thinking that labor costs must have risen quite a bit in those twenty years so that the producers probably felt that it would be cheaper to shoot Mission To Mars in a third world country that also happens to be an ally. They do quite nicely, Brian DePalma had some great sets constructed on the Jordanian desert and the cinematography is nice.

A lot is explained in Mission To Mars and not just what happened to Cheadle and company. It includes some of the mysteries of the Universe itself. I'm not sure of the science part whether it would hold up, but it's still entertaining. The players are all well cast in their parts, I wouldn't miss it.

This visually impressive tale of adventure and alien contact on Mars is, well, marred by an abundance of clichés and a lack of pacing which threaten to make it boring. There can be no doubt that de Palma's film is largely unsatisfying, generally because we often see impressive glimpses of what could have been, and also, regarding the director's track record, we know he's capable of doing much better. However, the flaws are endless and ultimately result in this film being a mess.

Personally, I liked the story very much indeed. Although the plot sometimes feels like APOLLO 13 (a film I personally didn't care for),the inclusion of the science fiction alien aspect makes it much more interesting than that. I especially liked the way they incorporated the real-life "Face on Mars" into the story, a clever trick. There are a number of plot twists along the way and one totally unexpected death scene which had me surprised. Unfortunately, while the story might be a good one, the script is just not so. Instead it's packed with clichéd lines and trite, sentimental dialogue which involves our actors and actresses having to embarrassingly emote as much as possible at all times.

I did like the cast in this film, even if they do basically go through the motions. Gary Sinise has long been a favourite of mine, but his smirking performance here can best be described as only adequate, especially during some emotional moments. The finale, in which he makes contact with an alien life form and walks around in a daze of wonder, just isn't convincing at all. Tim Robbins is just a nice, friendly bloke, totally lacking the edge that made his performance in ARLINGTON ROAD so intense. Connie Nielsen doesn't really have much to do, and Jerry O'Connell is just a technical whizz kid on the sidelines. I did like Don Cheadle's performance though.

The music score is another disappointment, especially as it comes from Ennio Morricone, the legendary composer. Morricone's music is slow throughout, draining excitement from the action sequences, when it really should be adding to it. I guess everybody has their off days...de Palma's direction also seems vapid and uninterested, apart from one prolonged scene in which our astronauts must venture outside of their ship to repair damage, which is taut and a partial return to the old days for de Palma, when all of his films used to have amazing, prolonged set pieces in them.

The special effects help to salvage this film, being pretty much amazing until one key scene at the end. The "possessed" sand storm at the beginning of the film is particularly impressive, and probably looked gobsmacking on the big screen. A surprising moment of violence (at least for a PG certificate) sees an astronaut spinning around and then actually disintegrating. The space scenes are never less than convincing, and all manner of tricks involving blood and Dr. Pepper floating in zero gravity are used, just like in EVENT HORIZON. For most of the time the budget is up on screen, and it shows. You never, for one moment, believe that they're NOT on Mars. These things make the finale harder to watch.

Basically, the surviving astronauts enter the "face" and find themselves in a virtual reality simulation which shows how the human race has evolved from aliens. Then one of the aliens shows up, and all credibility is ruined by the appalling CGI used to create it. Never for one moment does this alien look life like, impressive or otherwise, it just looks dumb. This really is inexcusable, as I've seen aliens in films which only a fraction of the budget this one has looking more realistic. Apart from this minor glitch, the special effects help to lift this film from the garbage pile. MISSION TO MARS is best described as a flawed curiosity, although it certainly makes me anticipate those two other 'Mars' films coming out soon, namely RED PLANET and GHOSTS OF MARS.