What "Red Planet" could have been if had been brought to the screen with necessary scientific accuracy. At first glance, the movie seems tightly made with 100 Minutes running time without end crawler. But director Antony Hoffman and screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer give in towards a mediocre entertainment factor. Spaceship arrives at Mars orbit. The Hollywood standard incident occurs with Spaceship having malfunctions. Exploring crew gets stranded on the Mars surface. Then they team members die one by one by accident, hand-to-hand struggle, malfunctioning robot dog attack and bio-hazard insect invasion. Spaceship in orbit gets fixed. One member on Mars surface survives. He gets off the planet by locating a hidden space capsule and stealing the battery from robot initiate rescue probe engines. Spaceship crew of two seals their victory with a kiss. The couple flies back to Earth.Due to the string of a straight forward scene structure, the movie can be enjoyable. Nevertheless every step of the characters' journey in "Red Planet" comes to easy. There is no urgency nor dramatic tension within scenes. The cast plays their parts, but they are not living it on screen. The ingredients have been on the plate to choose from, but the director makes no use of it. Cinematography Peter Suschitzky does only the absolute minimum to convey the visual story with color, light and standard camera movements. Production Designer Owen Paterson has his craft under control, but does not get challenged by the director. So to speak it seems that the studio executives took charge of the production footage and finished it up with two editors in standardized manner to open the movie up for widely ranged target audience, which in the case "Red Planet" did not work out. The movie fell flat at the box office domestically as well as internationally with just approx 33,500,000.00 U.S. Dollars revenue worldwide.This 80,000,000.00 Millions U.S. Dollars production shows in a sense that if a first-time director comes to story-driven feature material after a successful commercial portfolio, then it does not guarantee that a directorial signature can be translated. "Red Planet" could have been directed by anyone, it lacks a director's vision, which challenges the cast in their interactions, even dare to improvise from a mediocre script to surprise the audience instead of sedate them in their comfort zone. The production team of "Red Planet" had it all. Director Antony Hoffmann was unable to make use the values to create an event movie that last in the specter's mind.

Red Planet (2000): Dir: Antony Hoffman / Cast: Val Kilmer, Carrie- Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore, Terrence Stamp, Benjamin Bratt: About as bad as Mission to Mars. Plot regards a small crew deep in space on their way to Mars where they are ship-wretched. From there it is recycled mayhem as crew members die horribly by a mechanical creature that they created. Visual effects are striking and director Antony Hoffman does his best but the story is lame. Some of the crew die early. Terrence Stamp ruptures his spleen on the fall from space. Perhaps it was an easy method of getting off the set. Benjamin Bratt is accidentally pushed off a cliff, perhaps by somebody who couldn't stand his performance any longer. Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss and Tom Sizemore are wasted. They are on the screen the longest, which makes them the bravest considering how embarrassing the film is. Amee the mechanical dog malfunctions and runs rabid just like the screenwriter does when he put pen to paper. The only purpose the film serves is to repeat the same old story and market the production as if intelligent people couldn't see through the dimwitted scheme. Like the mechanical dog, the screenwriter also malfunctioned and ran rabid with crap we have seen countless times. Perhaps this film should be used as a doggie treat for a pound full of mechanical dogs. Score: 2 / 10

This is a very fun to watch movie, but it has some flaws: The plot is basic Hollywood formula, and also there are some holes in the script that annoyingly could have been fixed by a few extra lines, But the film also has many upsides, such as a good mystery, decent suspense, and cool FX. The acting is decent too, and the hole ridden plot still manages to keep it together. In all this is a decent sci-fi film. I recommend this film to people 12 and upOVERVIEW SCORE: 7.2/10

Earth is suffering from environmental damage. Mars has been slowly terra-formed as an alternative home. However it is somehow losing oxygen. A space mission is sent to discover the cause. The spacecraft is damaged by massive gamma radiation burst and the crew crash land to investigate Mars.It takes too long to get the movie going. There is too much tech talk without any magic. They don't even get to Mars until after 30 minutes. They spent too much time talking on the spaceship. I think we're suppose to be awed by all the spaceship special effects. It's not that special. Most of the start could easily be thrown out.The action is confused and rather uncompelling. It doesn't get any better on the ground. It's a slow moving grind. The orange look, the helmets, and the buzzy voices all make for a tiring watch. Watching people slowly suffocate is really boring. Having Carrie-Anne separated from everybody doesn't help. The climax (if you could call it that) has no suspense. It is completely uninteresting.