--- title: "Mission to Mars" year: 2000 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/mission-to-mars" fi1m_score: 50 critics_score: 38 critics_reviews: 16 published: "2026-09-20T10:29:59.935594+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T10:30:00.514195+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Mission to Mars (2000) Directed by Brian De Palma · 1h 54m · MPA PG · Science Fiction, Adventure, Mystery **Fi1m score: 50** · Critics 38 from 16 reviews *In a sentence:* De Palma can float a camera round Mars beautifully; nobody gave him a line worth saying once it stops > Brian De Palma stages the space walk with the patience of a man who loves the machinery, and for twenty minutes the film is alive. The rest is a rescue told in press-release dialogue, with a last act whose answer is sillier than its question. ## Synopsis The first manned mission to Mars is a day from launch, and the crew gathers for a barbecue. Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) says goodbye to his wife Debra (Elise Neal). Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), who trained for the mission and was taken off it after his wife died, watches from the edge of the party. Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) and Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen), married and on the backup crew, try to cheer him up. On Mars, Luke and his team (Peter Outerbridge, Kavan Smith, Jill Teed) find a formation on the surface their instruments cannot explain, and something tears through them when they go to look. One garbled transmission reaches the station. Woody, Terri, Jim and Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O’Connell) are sent to find out what happened. ## Review Brian De Palma’s *Mission to Mars* wants to be two films, a NASA procedural about a rescue and a hushed picture about where life came from, and it gets about half of each. The first is done with real care for how hatches seal and how people move in a suit. The second is done with a swelling choir and a script that explains itself at the end as if to a slow class. We admired several stretches of it and cannot recommend the whole, which is roughly where most critics landed in 2000 and where we land now. It opens well. Stephen H. Burum’s camera follows the crew of the first manned Mars mission round a barbecue in a single long take, drifting from a beer cooler to a child on a swing to Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) standing apart from it all, and by the time the shot ends we know who is going, who is staying and who has been left behind. The dialogue is not good even here, but the shot carries it. For a few minutes the film feels like De Palma’s. The cast are good enough to survive what they are given. Sinise plays McConnell as a man who has stopped arguing with his grief and is simply carrying it, and he is the only person on screen whose sadness reads as real. Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen, as the married Woody Blake and Terri Fisher, are relaxed and likeable, and their scenes together, including a slow weightless dance in the ship, are the warmest things in the film. Don Cheadle spends much of the running time alone and manages to look like a man who has been alone for a year. Jerry O’Connell is the joker, and is written as one. The middle stretch, in orbit and on the approach to Mars, is the reason to watch. De Palma stages a hull breach and a space walk at a patient, almost stately pace, with Burum holding the wide shot so we can read distances and Paul Hirsch cutting only when something has changed. Blood leaves a wound and hangs in the cabin as a string of slow red beads, and the film treats this as something to look at rather than a shock. We sat forward and stopped noticing the dialogue for about twenty minutes. It is unhurried, physical film-making, and there is not much of it in space pictures. Ennio Morricone scores all of this as if it were a mass. Low strings, then a choir, then a theme that keeps rising towards a resolution that never quite arrives. On the space walk it works, because the images are large enough to bear it. Over a briefing, or a man opening a packet of sweets, it is absurd, and there are a lot of briefings. Sanja Milkovic Hays’s suits and the ship interiors look borrowed from an actual space agency, and the film is at its best whenever it trusts that hardware to be interesting on its own. It does not trust it for long. John Thomas, Jim Thomas and Graham Yost’s screenplay has people say what they are doing while they do it, then say what it means, then say it again for the person who has just arrived. Nobody in the film has a trait that is not also a plot function. The mystery on the surface is handled as a puzzle, and once the crew are at a table working it out with a bag of sweets, the dread has gone and it does not come back. The last act goes somewhere we will not describe, except to say that the film answers its own question in full, slowly, with visual aids. We laughed at a moment plainly meant as wonder, and we did not enjoy laughing, because the people who made it were sincere. Against [*2001: A Space Odyssey*](https://film.one/film/2001-a-space-odyssey) (1968), which it borrows from openly, it makes the mistake Kubrick did not: it tells you. De Palma made *Mission: Impossible* four years earlier, a film that also had a thin script and got by on set pieces and nerve. This one has the set pieces and none of the nerve. Watch it for the middle forty minutes, in the dark, and decide for yourself whether to stay for the choir. At 114 minutes, with a PG certificate, it is at least a Mars film you can show a ten-year-old, who may take the ending better than we did. *Fi1m score 50, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics find Mission to Mars a failure, and a cold one. The reviews are largely negative, and the few compliments cluster in one place: the look of the thing. The space walks, the long takes in zero gravity and the planetary sequences earn respect even from critics who dislike everything around them, and several concede that De Palma’s technical command is intact. Sinise draws the odd kind word for holding the emotional centre together. The complaints are about words rather than images. Critics fault clunky, expository dialogue, characters who barely register, a slow opening and a finale most find silly, with 2001 named repeatedly as the film it borrows from without matching. The spread is wide. Contemporary reviews are almost uniformly hostile; the dissent comes later, with Slant Magazine and Collider arguing years afterwards that this is an underrated, ambitious De Palma work whose calm and optimism were misread as dullness. ### Reviews we read (16) - **Slant Magazine**, Eric Henderson (70/100, inferred): The critic defends the film as an underrated De Palma work with formalist elegance and a bold take on evolution, praising its becalmed direction and poetic blood effects in zero gravity. It marks the start of the director's 'old man cinema' phase despite studio intentions for a more conventional space adventure. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/mission-to-mars/) - **Sight and Sound**, Philip Strick (50/100, inferred): The review finds the film a visually pleasing display of space exploration and heroism that disguises its string of disasters and offstage storytelling. It singles out the grandeur of the space walks and planetary sequences for praise while noting De Palma's work here is largely on autopilot. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/446) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (30/100, inferred): The review finds the film notably lifeless and cold, with clunky, unconvincing dialogue that overwhelms its beautifully composed visuals, resulting in a pro forma plotting that feels deadly despite the director's focus on technical challenges and luminous images. It highlights the gap between stunning space shots and what is said on screen. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-mar-10-ca-7234-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film uneven, praising three sequences of real vision and wonder while criticizing the screenplay for long stretches of boilerplate dialogue, perfunctory characters, and illogical actions that drag the story down. It has intriguing ideas and a spirit reminiscent of 2001 but ultimately misses too many marks to recommend. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mission-to-mars-2000) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film dull and derivative despite strong effects and production design, criticizing underdeveloped characters, excessive exposition, and a kitschy finale that fails to deliver emotional impact. It borrows too heavily from classics like 2001 without matching their awe. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/mission-to-mars-1798192313) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (30/100, inferred): The critic finds Brian De Palma's film a mish-mash of familiar sci-fi elements from Kubrick's 2001 and other movies, with an outrageously silly ending and an unbelievably slow first 20 minutes. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2000/apr/14/culture.reviews4) - **The New Yorker**, Anthony Lane (30/100, inferred): The critic calls the film technically competent but lacking coherent thought or wit, with dialogue that feels hasty and effects that sometimes misfire, ultimately depressing in its reminder of all that can go wrong in early-year blockbusters. It faults the tone and the director's diminished ambition in this anonymous picture. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/03/20/spaced-out) - **The New York Times**, Elvis Mitchell (30/100, inferred): The review describes the film as a New Age paperweight that is emotionally lost in the stars, with nondescript nice-guy characters and noble profiles that feel like commemorative coins. It notes De Palma's visual flair but faults the inability to mix tones effectively in this plea for understanding and brotherhood. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/10/movies/film-review-small-step-for-man-but-a-big-whoop-for-martians.html) - **Evening Standard** (20/100, inferred): The review deems the film a derivative, sentimental mess that loots from better sci-fi. It begins with some promise in the barbecue scenes and early action but quickly stalls with effects-heavy sequences, philosophical twaddle, and unoriginal plotting. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/mission-to-mars-7433834.html) - **Empire**, Adam Smith (15/100, inferred): The critic calls it the worst film of the year so far. It starts promisingly like a fictionalised Apollo 13 but descends into hokey alien encounters, awful dialogue, and a weak plot that wastes its cast and De Palma's direction. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/mission-mars-review/) - **Total Film** (15/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a corny, intrusive mess dominated by silly Morricone music and a collage of borrowed sci-fi tropes. It wastes a strong cast, NASA-backed realism, and De Palma's technical skills on half-baked popcorn that fails to deliver adventure or depth. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/mission-to-mars-review/) - **Collider**, Liam Gaughan (80/100, inferred): The critic argues the film deserves reconsideration as an underrated, ambitious De Palma work that was ahead of its time. They single out its optimistic spirit, imaginative spectacle, and thoughtful blend of character drama with speculative ideas. [Read](https://collider.com/brian-de-palma-mission-to-mars-streaming-hulu/) - **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (65/100, inferred): The critic praises De Palma for respecting the heavens and allowing strong visual effects and long takes with a capable ensemble, treating the script intelligently in a Kubrickian manner. The ending ultimately fails to crack the mystery of the inexplicable, requiring faith that humans struggle to muster. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/mission-to-mars-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray) - **Polygon**, Jesse Hassenger (55/100, inferred): The piece compares the two 2000 Mars films and notes De Palma's strong extended sequence with smooth camerawork, while criticizing the later collapse into implausible, woo-woo revelations about life's origins. It frames both as flops that highlight why Mars movies struggled afterward. [Read](https://www.polygon.com/red-planet-mission-to-mars-at-25/) - **Film Stories**, A J Black (45/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an underwhelming, mournful and frequently corny experience that feels like an aberration for De Palma, more factory-line product than auteur work. Sinise's performance stands out as the strongest, selling the emotional core and the film's sense of wonder in its final stretch. [Read](https://filmstories.co.uk/features/mission-to-mars-revisiting-brian-de-palmas-sedate-space-odyssey) - **The Playlist** (40/100, inferred): The piece describes the film as a disappointingly conventional space adventure that is too dopey to rank among De Palma's best, undone by studio compromise and bad decisions, though it notes fun gonzo moments and the director stretching under constraints. It calls the results middle-of-the-road De Palma at his most frustrating. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/retrospective-the-films-of-brian-de-palma-20130828/7/) ## Details - **Director:** Brian De Palma - **Director:** Brian De Palma - **Screenplay:** Jim Thomas, Graham Yost, John Thomas - **Story:** John Thomas, Jim Thomas, Lowell Cannon - **Cinematography:** Stephen H. Burum - **Editor:** Paul Hirsch - **Music:** Ennio Morricone - **Costume design:** Sanja Milkovic Hays - **Producer:** Tom Jacobson - **Cast:** Gary Sinise as Jim McConnell; Tim Robbins as Woody Blake; Don Cheadle as Luke Graham; Connie Nielsen as Terri Fisher; Jerry O'Connell as Phil Ohlmyer; Peter Outerbridge as Sergei Kirov; Kavan Smith as Nicholas Willis; Jill Teed as Renée Coté - **Runtime:** 1h 54m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG - **Release (the US):** 10 March 2000 - **Genres:** Science Fiction, Adventure, Mystery - **Budget:** $90 million - **Box office:** $111 million ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $17.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $17.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AR, AU, BR, CA, CL, CO, EC, GB, IE, IL, IS, JP, MX, NL, NZ, PA, PE, PL, SE, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *2001: A Space Odyssey* (1968), Fi1m 92: The film De Palma is borrowing from, and the one that knew when to stop explaining — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/2001-a-space-odyssey.md) - *Solaris* (1972): Tarkovsky’s space station of grief; slower, stranger, and the sadness is the point - *Contact* (1997), Fi1m 76: Another sincere film about a message from out there, with a better script and a harder ending — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/contact.md) - *Apollo 13* (1995), Fi1m 84: Sinise again, and the NASA procedural done properly, with the hardware as the drama — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/apollo-13.md) - *Sunshine* (2007): Danny Boyle’s crew in trouble near the sun; the space walk is the film’s best half hour too --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/mission-to-mars