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Review by E.C. McMullen Jr. |
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USA Release: March 24, 2017 Skydance, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Rating: USA: R |
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So this robot spacecraft is whooshing through space and winds up flying through space pebbles which, despite their faster than bullet speeds, just kind of bounce off the spacecraft, doing minor damage.
It makes a lot of noise though, because this movie was apparently made by card carrying members of the Flat Earth Society who want us to Take their Science Seriously!
We're off to a great start.
Onboard the ISS, orbiting earth but currently re purposed for a Mars mission, the astronauts are waiting for the return of the spacecraft that is bringing Martian soil samples for study. This is a first.
Doctor Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson: DROWNING GHOST, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL, DOCTOR SLEEP, REMINISCENCE, DUNE) is from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) and is the research Captain who put this all together. This isn't military but civilian. Like ALIEN the chain of command is relaxed not disciplined. You can talk back to your boss but the punishment is a paycheck not confinement.
Well, confinement against your will at any rate. They are all voluntarily confined aboard a pretty tight space within space.
Because the robot craft is damaged and uncontrollable they are going to attempt to catch it wild, knowing that if they miss it will go flying off into space, likely unretrievable.
Maintenance and Repair Tech Rory Adams (Ryan Reynolds: THE OUTER LIMITS [TV 1995-2002], BOLTNECK, BLADE: TRINITY, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR [2005], X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, THE NINES, BURIED, R.I.P.D., SELF/LESS, DEADPOOL) decides to cowboy it with a space walk, manual over ride the robot arm, and he won't take No for an answer. He nearly gets everyone onboard killed but they all cheer because despite the damage he caused he caught it and that means they have their soil sample. That and because Rory is such a Ryan Reynolds type of charming joker who keeps everyone's spirits up.
That's vital to this crew because they're all one step from deep depression.
The scientist in charge of dealing with the soil sample is Hugh Derry (Ariyone Bakare: THE DARK KNIGHT, RED FACTION: ORIGINS, JUPITER ASCENDING, JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL [TV], HIS DARK MATERIALS [TV], CARNIVAL ROW [TV]) and he is extraordinarily desperate to find life in the soil samples. He's paralyzed from the waist down and has arbitrarily convinced himself without a shred of evidence that somehow, in some way, if they find life forms in the soil samples those could be used to cure our medical problems. Like his medical problem.
Cut to a white rat in the lab, harnessed in place for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile, one of the other ship scientists, Sho Surikami (Hiroyuki Sanada: MESSAGE FROM SPACE, MESSAGE FROM OUTER SPACE, SPIRAL, RINGU, THE RING 2 [1999], LOST [TV], THE WOLVERINE, EXTANT [TV], HELIX [TV], MR. HOLMES, AVENGERS: ENDGAME, WESTWORLD [TV], ARMY OF THE DEAD, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4) watches on a tablet as his wife back on earth gives birth to their baby. He does all he can to coach his wife from above and they have a girl.
Cut to a white rat in the lab, harnessed in place for no apparent reason.
Hugh, back at his Martian soil samples, thinks he's found what could be life, a single cell similar to earth cells. It's apparently dead but not decayed, which means it could be hibernating. He aggressively does all he can to coax it back to life, succeeds and now we have a movie.
Back to the white rat in the lab, still harnessed in place for no apparent reason. Man, existence must suck for that one lone rat.
The emotional core of this Mars mission on ISS is the ship's Doctor, David Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal: DONNIE DARKO, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, ZODIAC, SOURCE CODE, PRISONERS, ENEMY, NIGHTCRAWLER, NOCTURNAL ANIMALS). He's spent a record breaking amount of time on ISS and he never wants to leave. Back on earth he experienced the horrors of war and doesn't ever want to go back to humanity. For David, freedom is living in a confined claustrophobic spaceship surrounded by as few people as possible. People who come and go and he never has to form a lasting attachment to.
Finally there's Ekaterina Golovkina (Olga Dykhovichnaya) the Russian liaison who handles public relations. When earth is informed that single celled life has been found in the Mars soil sample its cause for celebration. A U.S. school is given the honor of naming it and the child given the honor of announcing it says the name of the school will be the name of the Martian: Calvin. Ekaterina is the least needful member of the crew but the most recognized public face of the mission.
Back to the white rat in the lab, week after week, still harnessed in place for no apparent reason. Man, this poor freaking rat!
Hugh, meanwhile has made a pet out of "Calvin", the Martian multicellular varmint that is growing at an alarming rate. He begins a gospel of Calvin because he has absolutely no evidence to back up anything he says, and what he says is: Calvin may be the answer to finding a cure for the incurable, restore the unrestorable! Hugh is losing his marbles, handling a potentially dangerous creature that has the whole ship under temporary quarantine, the entire crew, knows Hugh is off his cheese, and as he gets more wiggy he gets more sloppy, resulting in a lab accident that threatens the crew, jeopardizes the mission, and nearly kills "Calvin", making it dormant.
Despite being firmly reminded how crucial his work is and how dangerous an unknown life form like Calvin, which consumes glucose, could be, Hugh resets the needle on his behavior but doesn't change the record.
Wait. Glucose? The science in this movie is haphazard enough so let's have a quick
!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
Glucose, being a basic molecule (C6H12O6) occurs naturally on earth and, since its a combination of elemental atoms common to our sun and solar system, Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, its a natural extension to think that, under most conditions, it can be found on many of our moons and planets, particularly Mars.
Glucose is in fact, the most common Monosaccharide of the monomers (the most basic form of carbohydrate - polymer sugar) in our solar system. Plants use their chlorophyll to convert light energy from the sun into chemical energy called photosynthesis. The chemicals created are food that can later be metabolized with water and, during respiration of carbon dioxide (while releasing oxygen into our atmosphere), the plant grows. One of the foods plants make this way (there are a few) is glucose, which plants use to strengthen the cellulose of their cell walls.
Need I remind you that DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) consists of four basic monomer polymer sugars: cytosine [C], guanine [G], adenine [A] and thymine [T]? When we die we are plant food.
Want to know more about the science in your favorite movies? Hell yes you do! So finish reading this review and head over to !!!THE SCIENCE MOMENT!!!
Hugh decides to bring Calvin out of hibernation with shock therapy.
Great idea, Hugh! Torture the shit out of Calvin! That should bring it around! And on top of everything else you've done to it, that shouldn't make Calvin defensive or anything!
Oh look! That poor white lab rat again.
Calvin responds to the shock therapy, but not in a happy way.
...and... the white lab rat. Still in its harness. Still doing nothing.
Calvin shows Hugh who's boss and the black guy in the movie is the first to get it.
Everything goes all APOLLO 18 and from here on in its all Merry Mishaps.
As you'd expect from such In-Your-Face, On-The-Nose directing/editing, the lab rat gets it soon after. After all, it served absolutely no other purpose in the movie but to repeatedly remind us that it is there, bound and helpless, doing nothing but waiting to be on the menu.
In fact, in a SPECIES kind of way, LIFE does everything you'd expect, in a way that you'd expect. Even the end, played out as a twist ending, ends exactly as you'd expect.
Which is odd because the poster announces that we won't expect the unexpected ending which telegraphed itself far in advance, practically dancing and singing to announce itself.
Director Daniel Espinosa, renown for working with top actors in expensive, lavish productions that die at the box office (CHILD 44, MORBIUS), seems like a hell of a nice guy and LIFE is beautiful to look at, well shot, well designed, the cgi blood is almost believable, and yet somehow in a way that's nearly, but not quite, remarkable with all other excellent production considerations taken into account, bland.
Bland to the point of idiocy.
Just one example (there are many). Imagine using a flame thrower in the oxygen rich atmosphere of a spacecraft where there's no gravity (a flame thrower in a spaceship?!?). It's ridiculous but,
It adds drama!
I could deal if it was just that one thing, but in the same scene, and remember, no gravity, the character smashes glass. It's forehead slapping stupid but,
It adds drama!
We hear the glass tinkle into its thousands of pieces. The whole movie brilliantly takes place in a set without gravity. The point is driven home so hard you don't need to be a former astronaut to ask: where will all those thousands of tiny sharp shards go without gravity?
This kind of By The Beat, Save The Cat nonsense becomes unrelenting. Communications go out for no good reason so they can't talk to earth.
Because that adds drama!
Life support shuts down so they put on their space suits, but not their space helmets, thus not sealing themselves inside an environment that will Support Their Life. It betrays all the movie logic LIFE fastidiously explained up to this point, but,
It adds drama!
They unnecessarily choose to freeze, nearly so cold that they can't rescue themselves, almost passing out, at the verge of death, right until that moment that they arbitrarily put their helmet on, closing their space suit.
Because that adds drama.
There's no reason to keep the damn suit open except to unnecessarily increase the dramatic tension, which never happens because nobody was doing the most obvious thing to survive until it was too late - and then they did.
Not surprisingly, audiences gave LIFE the response it deserved.
Was this really in the screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (ZOMBIELAND [all], DEADPOOL [all])?
Was this really demanded by Producers Bonnie Curtis (A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MINORITY REPORT, RED EYE),
David Ellison (STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, WORLD WAR Z, TERMINATOR GENISYS, STAR TREK BEYOND, GEOSTORM, ANNIHILATION, GEMINI MAN, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, ALTERED CARBON [TV], THE TOMORROW WAR, WICKED GAME, TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS, FOUNDATION [TV]),
Dana Goldberg (I AM LEGEND, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, WORLD WAR Z, TERMINATOR GENYSIS, STAR TREK BEYOND, GEOSTORM, GEMINI MAN, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE, ALTERED CARBON [TV], THE TOMORROW WAR, WICKED GAME, TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS, FOUNDATION [TV]), and
Julie Lyn (PASSENGERS, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE)?
Maybe, but Espinosa was the storyteller and this dump truck of increasingly awkward stumbles were his call.
We were better off without this movie. Two Shriek Girls.
This review copyright 2008 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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