Director: Ridley Scott
Runtime: 141 minutes
For a movie about terrifying circumstances, Ridley Scott's The Martian has something you wouldn't normally expect: a sincere, deeply-entrenched air of optimism. Without straining too hard for 'feel-good' moments, Scott's adaptation of Andy Weir's best-selling novel is an exhilarating adventure because it refuses to get bogged down in existential crises. Seeing as how many of Scott's films are laced with either fatalism or downright nihilism, there is something truly invigorating in seeing the 77 year old make a movie that is basically a love letter to human ingenuity.
Set several decades in the future, The Martian wastes no time in dropping us off on the Red Planet and getting the ball rolling. Hardly a few minutes have gone by before a high-spirited NASA team is forced to abandon their mission and set course for Earth. But in the chaos of their escape (the cause of which is a colossal Martian storm), astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is struck by debris, and left for dead. Which, of course, he isn't.
There are so many points in the first act of Drew Goddard's screenplay that look like gateways to despair. Will we anguish with the NASA crew over their inability to rescue their colleague before take off? Will Mark Watney spend his final days on Mars pondering the meaning of life millions of miles away from home? The answer to both prompts is a resounding and triumphant 'No.' From the moment Watney drags himself back to base camp, he's on the go, thinking of what he has to do to survive long enough for the next NASA mission to reach Mars.
Scott - along with editor Pietro Scalia and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski - plunges headfirst into Watney's enthusiasm, to the film's great benefit. For a director who has long been regarded as a visual craftsman, he has scaled back rather marvelously. This is not a pretty or lush film, even with all of the sleek sets. It's an immersive, get-your-hands dirty endeavor that, like Mark Watney, likes to simply get the job done. The film may lack obvious moments of cinematic innovation or poetry, but it still thrills as an expertly calibrated and engagingly old-fashioned crowdpleaser.
Better yet, it's a crowdpleaser with actual smarts. The Martian is a tribute to human perseverance, but it's also a gushing ode to the unifying power of scientific progress. Characters throw around plenty of technical talk, but the smooth editing and dynamic performances (even the smallest roles are filled by actors who seem thrilled to be involved) erase the possibility of the film turning into a NASA training video.
First and foremost, The Martian would not work as well as it does without Damon's performance. Mark Watney can be a bit of a smart ass, but Damon keeps the character grounded, and nails all of Goddard's one-liners and off-the-cuff remarks. Even when facing life or death odds, the characters in The Martian still have room for laughter. Damon's co-stars all bring their charisma, ranging from Jessica Chastain's guilt-ridden commander to Kristen Wiig as NASA's prickly head of PR.
Yet none of these characters are especially well-rounded, and that includes Mark. And yet The Martian proves to be such rousing entertainment because it balances a cast of one-note characters with a smart sense of its story's stakes. There isn't too much to write about any of the individuals on screen, but we can sense their intelligence, their drive, and their desire to succeed and survive. Scott's latest cinematic foray into space hasn't produced another Ellen Ripley, and that's perfectly fine. What matters is that he's assembled a cast of charismatic actors who make for solid stand-ins for humanity as a whole. The Martian may start as Mark Watney's story, but it ends as joyous statement of what humanity is capable of when the lines between individuals and entire communities vanish in the name of survival. The dangers of space are terrifying, but The Martian reminds us that in the face of overwhelming odds, sometimes the perfect antidote is just a touch of optimism.
Grade: B+
Director: David Ayer
Runtime: 134 minutes
"War is hell." It's not a new idea. It hasn't been for a very, very long time. Even so, it's not impossible to find something new (or at least fresh) to add to one of the most obvious statements in the English language. David Ayer's WW2 tank actioner, however, isn't up to the task of doing or saying anything remotely new or creative. Though there's plenty of impressive technical work on display, Fury's characters are such cardboard cutouts that there's next to nothing to connect to beyond surface investment in the protagonist's survival.
Our set up is as follows: Army desk clerk Norman (Logan Lerman) is assigned to fill the place of the titular tank, headed by Wardaddy (Brad Pitt, rocking the same unfortunate hairdo that Jake Gyllenhaal suffered through in Prisoners). Norman's first task is to clean the brains of his predecessor out of his seat, while the rest of the hardened crew look on, mostly with derision. The other tank-mates include Bible-quoting cannon expert Boyd (Shia LaBeouf), driver Gordo (Michael Pena), and shell-loader Grady (Jon Bernthal). They're all assholes in their own special ways.
Now, here's a fun game: who lives and who dies? If you're expecting surprises, don't. As American soldiers march through war torn German terrain, Fury marches through every plot development we've come to expect in war stories about the Greatest Generation. Playing spot-the-cliche is often as interesting as the scenes where guns and bombs aren't going off.
Most of Fury is simply a prolonged set-up for its final firefight, wherein the tank's crew, stranded on a rural road, must face off against 300 Nazi foot soldiers. When it comes to carnage, Ayer and his behind the scenes team really do know what they're doing. The claustrophobia of the tank's interior adds an extra layer of tension as the situation grows more dire. Editing and sound work give all of the heavily armed chaos proper emphasis without bludgeoning the viewer, and the make up team ensures that war looks as grimy as possible. Steven Price's booming score is sporadically effective, though it's often too big for its own good. At least it gives the viewer something else to listen to other than the dialogue. Turns out, the only time when Fury comes alive is when scores of people are dying.
Yet it's difficult to find anything worthy of praise when it comes down to the men who we spend more than two bloody hours with. Norman's arc has been done to death, and neither Ayer nor Lerman have come up with anything intriguing about the film's supposed window into the physical and mental toll of war. Pitt, at least, gives the film a consistent performance to hold the stale drama together, but Wardaddy's standard tough yet honorable leader schtick is too restrictive to achieve great depth.
The supporting players don't fare much better, though often for different reasons. Pena simply doesn't have enough to do, while LaBeouf is stuck fighting a battle against the editors and the script. Boyd's religious alignment overwhelms the rest of his character, and LaBeouf's dialogue wears thin early on. And even though the actor is impressively restrained a times, certain cutaways to his ruddy, tear-stroked face look like they belong in a silent movie. On a completely separate level is former The Walking Dead actor Bernthal, and not in a good way. There's nothing wrong with Grady being a repugnant jerk, but Bernthal throws himself a little too fully into the role. He's not a compelling thorn in anyone's side. Instead, he's just unbearable. Sure, Nazis are terrible, but for much of the ride it's Grady who I wished would get his head blown off.
If Fury had merely been a pure adrenaline rush, it might have been more convincing. Unfortunately, Ayer is determined to say something meaningful, and it doesn't go all that well. There's a glimmer of hope when Wardaddy and Norman visit a bombed-out town and rest in a local woman's apartment. In addition to allowing the wonderful Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca to appear, the apartment scene is one of the few nonviolent segments of the film that comes close to tackling some complex notions about the relationship between invading armies and native citizens. But then Grady and the rest of the Fury crew show up, and it's all downhill from there. Grady's increasingly boorish behavior adds nothing to the scene's dynamic, and it only serves to make him even more repellent.
Once Fury bulldozes through its entirely expected climax, connection with the story finally breaks. The admittedly impressive final shot shows how much horrific effort went into such a brief moment of a war that last nearly a decade, but it has a second, unintentional effect. As the film shows us the minute significance of the final battle in the grand scheme of the war, it also serves as a reminder of Fury's own insignificance as a war story. Hollywood has a whole ocean of WW2 dramas, and nothing about Fury is good enough to make it more than just another drop.
Grade: C+/C
