Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kirsten Wigg, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Chen Shu.
If you want epic adventure you really only have call upon Ridley Scott and he will deliver you a story of such rich ambition and heroism, such is the outer core of the autumn blockbuster The Martian.
Human nature is such that we can go to war with each other over the pettiest of arguments, that we can find ways to destroy whole civilisations without batting an eyelid and yet someone becomes lost, someone suffers such terrible unimaginable tragedy that we instinctively pray for them, light candles of vigil or send all the help that can be mustered to aid the situation in any way possible. On Earth that is all well and good, admirable and so very Human and yet in the deep vastness of space, help is not that easy to come by.
The Martian is not just a film about heroism in the face of adversity, it prays on the inner thoughts of humanity, to deal with the lack of voice, to have identity stripped away because there is nobody else to talk to, the lack of communication rendering any feeling of sympathy or compassion as moot and void. Trapped so far away from home, left for dead, you either live or you die on your own.
It is an emotion that Ridley Scott has tapped into with great effect in The Martian and in Matt Damon he has utilised perhaps the one person who can dig that deep into the psyche and not only make him sympathetic to the story line and the situation but to whom his character of Mark Watney becomes the sole human reason for watching the spectacle unfold. The real thrill of the film comes surprisingly in the application of science and the imagination to see adversity through, the power to stay alive and the ingenuity not be beaten.
Ridley Scott has done more in one film than N.A.S.A has done in quite a while to sell the thought of space as an on-going adventure for Humanity to keep on driving towards and coupling it with the thought of co-operation between nations, borders being smashed down and the hand of friendship being offered, that in the end no one person is bigger than the Human Race but without caring for the individual, Humanity is doomed; this is what makes The Martian a tremendous must see.
Visually impressive with Matt Damon on complete top form and directed by a man willing to keep Humanity’s eyes on the bigger picture, The Martian is to be considered as that epic of Humanity, that realisation of heroism that lingers somewhere in us all.
Ian D. Hall