Mission to Mars was savagely ripped apart by the critics but it isn't a bad movie by any means. Sure it isn't 2001 A space Odyssey but I feel it is unfairly criticized. Maybe the extreme direction the film takes in the second half is to blame, or maybe the fact that it had 3 different writers which is never good news. Regardless of other's opinion you should check this out yourself. If you like science fiction movies, NASA or Mars you'll probably think this is an alright film.

"Cheesy" would be the word if I didn't love cheese so much. The writing was so bad, I would rank this as one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I don't say this lightly (and I've seen "The Room!").

I'm a huge fan of Brian DePalma movies and I've put off watching Mission to Mars for years and finally last night i viewed it. WOW...what a waste of time. I can't believe they spend over a hundred million dollars to finance and distribute this pile of crap. No wonder it failed miserably.In the theatrical trailer for this film, they put "A Brian DePalma Film," which is followed by "director of Mission Impossible." So therefore i was expecting great suspense, on the edge of your seat thrills, and great action similar to Mission Impossible but on A MISSION TO MARS.The film does have moments of DePalma's genius with suspense and tension along with his uncut takes signatures shots however, the characters are flat and almost one dimensional. It was hard to relate to any of them and so my viewing experience was just about watching for the sake of watching rather than being immersed in the film.Most of the visual effects in the film are great however, The Martian looked like an unfinished 1990s carton animatic. Perhaps the most annoying part of this film is its score, which i found dated, boring, distracting, and stupid. I'm not a fan of this composer at all. His music sound like left over crap from The Thing score that wasn't used in that film as well.This composer also killed another Brian DePalma film that i thought was great, The Untouchables. In that particular film the score made the movie sound like a live action cartoon of Ben and Jerry.

I really think Brian De Palma is a marvelous and talented director, but he missed the mark on this one. I'm not sure where exactly this went awry, because he had a good, solid cast to work with, but that dialogue - good grief! To call it a snooze-fest would be generous. Another thing - I wouldn't claim in the slightest to know anything intimately about security protocols and procedures aboard a spacecraft, but I would hazard a guess that nothing that happens in this film could ever possibly occur aboard a real spacecraft. Not to mention the severely impaired mental state of Gary Sinise's character. I'm no psychotherapist, but I can't imagine that a real Jim McConnell would be allowed to set foot on a space-faring vessel, even as a maintenance guy, let alone as a decision maker.That aside, the movie starts well enough, but descends rapidly into the unbelievable, then proceeds to become entirely ridiculous and conspiratorial. I want to say that I am more than ready to generously suspend my disbelief if the story treats my intelligence with respect, which I'm sorry to report - it did not.I'm not sure if I have written a spoiler into this review, and I have no intention of revealing plot lines - there's already plenty of other reviews that do that on here and also address the bizarre left turn that the plot takes, but I'm hedging my bets.Don Cheadle provides the standout performance in this movie - he seemed to really own his character and that's pretty much the nicest thing I can say about this movie.End point - wasn't worth the running time, so avoid this derivative disappointment unless you've already watched Red Planet (which is far better than this) and you just *need* to see another Mars movie at all costs.