BEFORE: I've been thinking that I messed up, by watching all of the sports films on the list, so I can't possibly tie in to the Olympics. But I found out today that there IS a Mars mission going on right now, with a Rover scheduled to land on the red planet in just a few days. So my schedule, which was planned out months ago, now seems sort of prophetic. Linking from "Mars Needs Moms", Joan Cusack was also in "High Fidelity", and so was Tim Robbins (last seen in "Green Lantern").
THE PLOT: When the first manned mission to Mars meets with a catastrophic and mysterious disaster, a rescue mission is launched to investigate the tragedy and bring back any survivors.
AFTER: Ah, after starting this one I remembered that a few years ago, I did watch the ending of this film - which counts as a movie sin, since one should never watch the ending without having seen the beginning. I had no idea at the time that I'd want to watch the full movie later on. Unfortunately, that ruined most of the suspense for me.
In addition to the upcoming rover landing, there has been some talk lately about a manned mission to Mars, which made me want to investigate the parameters shown in this film. A couple times in the film, the astronauts talk about traveling "100 million miles" from Earth to Mars, and the timeframe shown is about 6 months. I wondered if this was accurate - so I checked the web. The closest Earth and Mars have ever been is about 35 million miles, and the farthest possible distance is 249 million miles. With an average distance of 140 million miles, I guess the movie got the numbers right, but now it makes me wonder why they didn't wait until the two planets were closer.
Using the speed of the Apollo 10 mission, the time to travel from Earth to Mars at their closest distance would be about 8.4 months. I think we can assume that spacecrafts might get a bit faster by the year 2020, so I'm going to allow the 6 month trip seen in this film. I still have some concerns about how much fuel would be needed, and whether the ship could carry enough food for 4 astronauts, but let's not bog down this film with a bunch of logistics.
Besides, the second mission seen in the film is a rescue mission, and time was critical, so obviously they couldn't wait for the planets to align. All of this is to prevent me from talking about the plot, which is nearly impossible to do without giving away spoilers. I'll just say it has a lot to do with that notable mountain on Mars that appears to look like a face when seen from space.
And the movie feels the need to answer questions about the origin of life on Earth, in a way that (I'm guessing) probably annoys both the evolutionists and the creationists. In addition, it's sort of a non-answer about how life began on Earth - and if life began elsewhere, how did it begin there?
Also starring Gary Sinise (last seen in "Impostor"), Don Cheadle (last seen in "Brooklyn's Finest"), Jerry O'Connell (last seen in "Kangaroo Jack"), Connie Nielsen (last seen in "Permanent Midnight"), Kim Delaney, and Armin Mueller-Stahl (last seen in "Avalon").
RATING: 6 out of 10 duststorms
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