THE MARTIAN(PG-13)
**** (out of 5)
October 2, 2015
STARRING
Matt Damon as MARK WATNEY
Jessica Chastain as MELISSA LEWIS
Kristen Wiig as ANNIE MONTROSE
Jeff Daniels as TEDDY SANDERS
Michael Peña as RICK MARTINEZ
Sean Bean as MITCH HENDERSON
Kate Mara as BETH JOHANSSEN
Sebastian Stan as CHRIS BECK
Aksel Hennie as ALEX VOGEL
Chiwetel Ejiofor as VINCENT KAPOOR
Benedict Wong as BRUCE NG
Mackenzie Davis as MINDY PARK
Donald Glover as RICH PURNELL
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Ridley Scott
BY KEVIN CARR
Listen to Kevin’s radio review…
Ridley Scott takes another stab at the space adventure with “The Martian,” based on Andy Weir’s best-selling novel. In the film, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut that is accidentally abandoned on the surface of Mars when the mission goes awry and the crew thinks he is dead. He must figure out how to survive on the planet long enough for NASA to launch a rescue mission and save him.
The movie stumbles a bit in the beginning with some massive logical holes in the set-up and some questionable science, but soon it corrects its flight path to be one heck of an entertaining movie. Like “Apollo 13” (though not based on a true story, obviously), “The Martian” finds its heroics in being clever and having a solid grasp of science.
The cast, which is impressively and so full of well-known names that it dwarfs that of Scott’s Biblical epic “Exodus: Gods and Kings” from last December, is very good and doesn’t try to upstage each other. And Damon holds his own, often acting only against himself, without coming across as too cocky (though he does do this a little bit).
“The Martian” pushes the right emotional buttons and is a crowd-pleaser. It also differentiates itself well enough from some very recent space disaster movies like “Gravity” and “Interstellar” that it doesn’t seem derivative or stale. It’s a strong movie that should attract a large crowd, even if it does tempt some conspiracy theories about NASA’s announcement this week that they have definitively discovered water on the Red Planet’s surface.
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