Bringing Back Our Boy

So The Martian is pretty much perfect – Hollywood working at its best, on all cylinders.

Based on the best-selling 2011 Andy Weir novel and directed by Ridley friggin’ Scott, the blockbuster showcases Matt Damon at his starriest best (yeah, feel free to never mind that recent case of foot-in-mouthitis of his because it really can’t touch him) and features an effective, all-star supporting cast led by Jessica Chastain. It earns and holds on to your awe for close to two and a half hours. Heck, it even finds China a plum part of play in its drama that doesn’t have anything to do with antagonizing America (clever, clever business!).

The story of a man stranded, hurt and alone, on Mars, this has got to be the most optimistic movie of the year.

Damon, as you more than likely already known, stars in the blockbuster as Mark Watney, the hero of a yarn that got its start as a free e-book on the Internet, can you believe. Anyway, Mark is an engineering-savvy botanist and part of the Ares III manned NASA mission to Mars. He and some of his crew commanded by Chastain’s Cmrd. Lewis get caught in a nasty Red Planet storm; he is hit by some flying debris, and they, presuming him dead, leave him behind, lest they all should perish, too, and, you know, have it all get lost. It is an extremely difficult call for Lewis, but one that she ultimately makes and not without a sense of this-is-wrong reserve that will weigh on her for most of the film’s second act.

Except, of course, Mark ain’t dead. He is badly hurt, but, for some miracle, alive, and facing the challenge of a lifetime: Surviving on Mars until a new mission can plausibly rescue him.

What follows is an exciting and engrossing journey toward survival, on a most inhospitable and hopeless place, and Damon takes us there with aplomb. His charisma as The Martian carries us from beginning to end in the same way that Tom Hanks’ Tom Hanks-ness assured us that his Cast Away would be alright, no matter what happened to him on that island.

The Martian – as considerable as it is, length-wise – also finds a clever rhythm with which to tell and show us what is going on back on Earth and on Lewis’ Earth bound ship, the Hermes. Back at NASA, we meet Jeff Daniels’ Teddy Sanders, the agency’s head of operations; Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Vincent Kapoor, the mission’s director; and Kristen Wiig’s Annie Montrose, the agency’s spokesperson. Sean Bean pops up as the flight director for the Hermes, and as the voice of defiant reason when reason seems to get tabled in favor of practicality.

See, Sanders and Kapoor, they read a little unclear at first. Like, I got a little bit of a we-can-work-this-to-our-funding-advantage vibe from them in their initial discussion about how to approach Mark’s situation once they realized the man was friggin’ alive and determined to stay alive. As the film chugs along, though, it becomes clear that that may have been a misdirection. Or a clumsily written portion of the script. It’s all very nebulous...and easily overlooked.

Meanwhile, up in space, Lewis and her surviving team – which includes Kate Mara, Michael Peña, and Sebastian Stan, all of whom do various technical things – are journeying back home, their hearts haunted by what happened to their peer. That is, of course, until they are finally informed that Mark is still kicking. Their return trip home briefly becomes a mutiny after they decide that, no, they most go back for Mark.

Alas, this sends NASA into scramble for resources against time they don’t have. Worse, Mark is running out of time himself.

Enter China, who emerges as a savior who has been witnessing The Rescue of Mark Watney quietly and from afar. Global friendship and collaboration: isn't it swell?

Look, I said that The Martian is pretty much perfect. It isn’t perfect. It spends a lot of time explaining things, how Mark sciences the s--- outta Mars to make it. It gives into a cliché or two (one character not stranded on Mars asks another also not stranded on Mars if he believes in God. And it has Wiig as a NASA spokesperson! (No disrespect to Wiig, but unless she’s being sullen as she has been in her non-comedies, I cannot quite take her seriously...yet.) But, man, does it look and feel like a production of this caliber should.

This is a great piece of popcorn fun that also sorta teaches ya something and/or renews your interest in all that is unknown – in all that is possible. That is why we invest in going to the movies, and the ROI on this one is off the charts.

My Rating ****

Photo: 20th Century Fox.