 ***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.*** Tagline: Bring Him Home; Help is only 140 million miles away "Matt Damon in his best performance ever" leads a stellar cast in this breathtaking sci-fi adventure from legendary director Ridley Scott (Alien, Prometheus) based on the #1 New York Times best-selling novel. During a manned mission to Mars, American astronaut Mark Watney (Damon) is presumed dead and left behind by his crew. But Watney is still alive, and he must now find a way to contact Earth - and survive on a barren planet with meager supplies - in hope that an international team of scientists can devise a near-impossible rescue plan to bring him home! Storyline: During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible, rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney's safe return. Written by 20th Century Fox. Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 9, 2016 -- Andy Weir deserves congratulations for any number of issues surrounding his debut novel The Martian, including having not just the cojones to self-publish but the courage to offer up a work that eschewed a number of science fiction tropes to deliver a reasonably accurate accounting of what being stranded on a "neighboring" planet might actually be like. But perhaps the most laudable thing that Weir was able to accomplish with The Martian was making science really and truly cool for a coterie of readers from all generations and different walks of life. There's a humorous little moment in Ridley Scott's film adapation of The Martian where stranded astronaut and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is reviewing the challenges he's facing while trying to survive until a rescue operation—one which Watney knows will take years to realize—can be mounted. Watney resiliently states his solution to his troubles in one of his video journal entries, calmly saying, "I'm going to have to science the s*** out of this," a statement that some readers might want to apply to Weir's own approach toward his novel. Taking my own family as just one example in an obviously non-scientific survey, Weir's book completely captured the fancy of both my 19 year old computer programming, coding wizard son, as well as my somewhat less tech savvy wife (whose age will not be disclosed due to my wish to remain living). It's perhaps worth comparing The Martian's relatively rigorous scientific anchoring to another film that dealt with a castaway on the Red Planet, Byron Haskin's 1964 opus Robinson Crusoe on Mars. While the earlier film shares The Martian's almost hallucinatory setting of auburn tinged cliffs and dusty dunes (Robinson Crusoe on Mars filmed its exteriors in Death Valley, while The Martian opted for some more distant locales, including Jordan), Haskin's opus has a number of fanciful elements, including an astronaut who learns to "breathe" (with a little help) Mars' atmosphere. This space explorer also ultimately discovers that Mars' supposedly barren environment actually produces foodstuffs of a sort. Neither of these scientifically questionable issues are part of The Martian's plot mechanics, and instead the film traffics in the same sort of loneliness that informed Robinson Crusoe on Mars, albeit within a context that relies on a more cogent understanding of what life on the Red Planet might actually be like. Weir's novel was able to devote considerable narrative time to various scientific aspects which are presented more tangentially in the film version, but there's still a feeling of veracity providing a formidable foundation to much of The Martian. Some may find the film oddly comical some of the time (there has been some blowback that it has been nominated in the comedy category of the Golden Globes), but The Martian is a slam bang entertainment that not only makes science cool, but (perhaps more importantly) absolutely riveting most of the time. Watney is part of a team of astronauts on a mission named Ares III which has deposited a crew on the surface of Mars for a series of experiments and reconnaissance planned to take place over about a month's time. There's an immediate display of the camaraderie and bantering quality between these adventurers as the film starts, but things become deadly serious almost instantly when a violent storm descends, one that's vicious enough to potentially knock over the spacecraft the team is supposed to leave the planet's surface on. That forces an emergency evacuation order on the part of the mission's commander, Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain). In a horrifying sequence the astronauts attempt to get from their "habitation" unit to the spacecraft in order to depart Mars, a short but perilous journey that ends in apparent tragedy when Watney is whacked full on by a satellite dish cartwheeling through the ferocious Martian wind. With no life sign data emanating from Watney's spacesuit, and no ability to find Watney's now far flung body in the pitch black darkness, Lewis has no choice but to depart with her surviving crew, supposedly leaving Watney's corpse on the surface of Mars. Of course Watney is not dead, and in a second horrifying sequence startles awake to the realization that he has been "speared" by part of the wiring of the satellite dish, forcing Watney to operate on himself once he drags himself back to the habitation unit. In the first of several elisions that cover huge narrative swaths contained in Weir's book, Watney assesses his chances, taking an inventory of supplies (especially food stuffs), and decides that "sciencing" the you-know-what out of the situation is his only recourse. As a botanist, he's aware the food will not grow in the bacteria free soil of the Red Planet, and so he sets about "injecting" that element courtesy of the human waste that has accrued in a portal of the habitation unit. He manages to grow a rather amazing crop of potatoes, something that will at least provide sufficient calories for the time being (the film tends to avoid some of the novel's explanations, namely that Watney has vitamins to spare for those kinds of nutritional needs and is simply searching for easy calories to burn). Meanwhile, in some kind of interruptive interstitials, a number of people back at NASA, including director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) and Mars mission director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor), become aware that Watney may well be alive and stranded, courtesy of some satellite imagery which reveals various movements on the planet. In another elision, The Martian rather perfunctorily establishes contact between the two planets, as NASA media director Annie Montrose (a not particularly well cast Kristen Wiig) attempts to manage the flow of information out to the public, since NASA first announced Watney's death and then is forced to admit he's alive and stranded on Mars, with the rest of the Ares III crew already well on their way back home to Earth. Drew Goddard's adaptive screenplay commendably keeps momentum surging forward even as a number of sidebars threaten to derail the narrative trajectory. NASA's desperate attempts to get a rescue plan hatched encounter a number of obstacles, while Mark himself has a number of hurdles to overcome, including one potentially debilitating tragedy that unfolds (again without the helpful contextual explanation the novel provides). The story probably indulges in a bit too much espionage like subterfuge with regard to a supposedly mad rescue gambit developed by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory worker (Donald Glover) which is then appropriated against official NASA wishes by Ares III mission director Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean). The Martian also perhaps relies on a bit too many Gravity -esque plot mechanics as the rescue attempt moves into its endgame, especially since at least some of the hyperoblic developments are creations of the film version. What works surprisingly well in this adaptation is the rather freewheeling humor that's often on display, something that in some cases is attributable to the macho bravado of Watney, but which also tends to unfold as Mark and his Ares III crewmates get back in touch with each other. Less felicitous comedy is had courtesy of some of the NASA scenes, where Wiig's mugging is sometimes shoehorned into the proceedings. One way or the other, this is a resolutely different tone than that which typically informs these grandiose science fiction epics, and may seem at least intermittently odd to some viewers. Damon does exceptional work here, in what amounts to a solo performance for long if not exclusive swaths of the film. The probably overstuffed supporting cast often doesn't have a whale of a lot to work with, but most performers manage to create quickly accessible and relatively believable characters. The film version eschews much in the way of backstory, though, simply offering many of the large array of supporting personnel as types or even plot conveniences utilized to move things along. Director Ridley Scott is certainly no stranger to larger than life cinematic exploits, and he marshals his forces here extremely well, delivering a well paced and exciting adventure despite the film's well over two hour running time. The Martian makes a play for a sort of globalism and unity of Mankind as it moves into its predictably heartstring tugging finale, but what really sets this film apart from many of its science fiction kin is its resolute depiction of both a single working scientist (Watney) and a team of working scientists (the Ares III crew and their NASA cohorts) all using science to overcome seemingly unconquerable odds. The film is tonally a bit of an odd duck, with an almost whimsical sense of humor at times that may strike some viewers as misplaced. But Ridley Scott once again proves he is the master of both the large canvas and intimate personal angles of a larger than life story. Supplemental features are a bit on the self promotional side (what else is new?), but technical merits are top notch and The Martian comes Highly recommended. Trivia:
[CSW] -4.8- Absolutely superb intellectual thriller. Outstanding cast, brilliant 3D effects (but will also play lovely on Blu-ray, but the bigger the screen the better), and an excellent psychological study. Those complaining that they "couldn't bring themselves to care about the characters" are missing the point. Here, it's not about any one character (even the lead Mark Watney, outstandingly portrayed by Matt Damon) but the fact is that "the character" is the TEAM, the MISSION. Americans seem to need to have it be about a single person, but sometimes the "character" about whom you need to care is the team. I think this film absolutely hit the mark. This is the one of the best thriller, the best sci-fi, the best drama of this year. Cast Notes: Matt Damon (Mark Watney), Jessica Chastain (Melissa Lewis), Kristen Wiig (Annie Montrose), Jeff Daniels (Teddy Sanders), Michael Peña (Rick Martinez), Sean Bean (Mitch Henderson), Kate Mara (Beth Johanssen), Sebastian Stan (Chris Beck), Aksel Hennie (Alex Vogel), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Vincent Kapoor), Benedict Wong (Bruce Ng), Mackenzie Davis (Mindy Park), Donald Glover (Rich Purnell), Nick Mohammed (Tim Grimes), Shu Chen (Zhu Tao). IMDb Rating (01/12/16): 8.1/10 from 271,482 users Top 250: #189
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