THE LAST DAYS ON MARS (2013)

Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Director: Ruairi Robinson  
Cast: Liev Schreiber, Romola Garai, Elias Koteas, Olivia Williams, Johnny Harris, Goran Kostic, Tom Cullen
RunTime: -
Rating: TBA
Released By: Shaw
Official Website:  

Opening Day: 5 December 2013

Synopsis: On the last day of the first manned mission to Mars, a crew member of Tantalus Base believes he has made an astounding discovery - fossilized evidence of bacterial life. Unwilling to let the relief crew claim all the glory, he disobeys orders to pack up and goes out on an unauthorized expedition to collect further samples. But a routine excavation turns to disaster when the porous ground collapses, and he falls into a deep crevice and near certain death. His devastated colleagues attempt to recover his body. However, when another vanishes they start to suspect that the life-form they have discovered is not yet dead. As the group begins to fall apart, it seems their only hope is the imminent arrival of the relief ship Aurora.

Movie Review:

Its selection for the Quinzaine des Realisateurs (or Directors Fortnight) at the Cannes Film Festival this year might confer a certain pedigree, but Los Angeles-based Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson’s debut feature is really no more than a ho-hum B-grade sci-fi actioner. Based on genre author Sydney J. Bounds’ 175 short story ‘The Animators’, it pits a research crew during the final 19 hours of their mission on Mars against a virulent strain of bacteria from the planet that turns humans into… zombies - and just to be clear, we’re not talking slow-moving ones like ‘The Walking Dead’ but something more akin to the zombies on steroids in ‘World War Z’.

There is no doubt an inherent cheesiness to the premise in this day and age, so in order to be taken seriously, it would need a compelling enough script to hook its viewers in. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Clive Dawson’s screenplay lacks. The characters are no more than stock types - Live Schreiber’s Vincent Campbell is a reluctant hero struggling with a traumatic past; there’s the textbook coward Richard Harrington (Tom Cullen) who cares only for preserving his own life; there’s the bitchy female character Kim Aldrich (Olivia Williams) who can’t quite fit in with any of the rest; and then there’s of course the one hiding a secret, Marko Petrovic (Goran Kostic), whose own selfish ambition inadvertently unleashes the disaster on everyone else.

Not only are the characters too familiar, the scenarios are also all too predictable. After a relatively promising setup in the first half hour, the rest of the movie quickly descends into a run-of-the-mill survival picture where you’ll be able to guess just who dies first, dies later or gets to last till the end. It doesn’t help that Robinson doesn’t quite have the grasp of a good choreographer of tense white-knuckle action, so despite the claustrophobic settings, what we end up thinking is not how nail-biting things must be but rather how repetitive the sequences of characters running for some decompression chamber and/or airlock while shouting “c’mon! c’mon! c’mon” are. Even as a straightforward action movie, it hardly impresses, worse still when it takes itself so utterly seriously.

Not that there aren’t small merits to be acknowledged here - like we said, the first half hour is a pretty engaging affair, in no small part due to the humbling Martian backdrops that we see plenty of. Designed and shot on location in the Jordan desert, the settings convey both the desolation and the expanse of how life on the Red Planet would have been. Another small blessing is the acting, anchored by a empathetic performance by character actor Schreiber. Probably one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood today, he projects gravitas and draws empathy to his lead role as a person struggling with his own personal demons. Other supporting acts like Williams, Romola Garai and Elias Koteas also lend solid support, but are otherwise hemmed in by a script that doesn’t seem bothered to develop their respective characters over the course of the movie.

On balance therefore, ‘The Last Days of Mars’ is neither appalling nor outstanding; indeed, it is mediocre in almost every aspect, and is unlikely to do for Robinson what ‘Moon’ did for Duncan Jones or say ‘Monsters’ for Gareth Edwards. This is no great sci-fi, perhaps even more disappointing arriving in the wake of Alfonso Cuaron’s breathtaking ‘Gravity’, and very likely to underwhelm audiences looking for anything smart or intelligent. Yes, proof of life on the Red Planet remains very much a myth, and as long as the track record of movies set on Mars remains as spotty as this, there isn’t much doubt why. 

Movie Rating:

(A disappointingly run-of-the-mill B-grade action movie set on Mars that pits a crew of humans against zombie-inducing bacteria)

Review by Gabriel Chong