Actors: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain,
Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan,
Aksel Hennie, Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Rating: 10 out of 10, Matt Damon
carries the movie by force of understated personality; not an easy feat. He
plays an astronaut stranded on Mars who faces impossible odds to survive. The
camerawork and special effects are superb but this is a story of the human
spirit, embodied by Damon’s heroic solitary struggle as well as the concurrent
story back on earth and his fellow crew members on a ship in transit. All too
often movies take the easy way and demonize the politics or the inevitable
infighting a disaster entails. Here the nobility of what man is capable of is
explored, even lionized and not in a cheap, exploitive manner. It seems the
current generation is being beaten down by the forces of political correctness
bent on limitation but not here. Faced with life and death Damon’s character
doesn’t bemoan his fate, he just gets to work. Maintaining the focus on the
human level drawn on an epic sci fi canvas Ridley Scott delivers a true
masterpiece. “Riveting” would vastly understate the last 45 minutes of this
movie.
MVP: Damons’s movie from start to finish as the irrepressible
Mark Watney
No comments:
Post a Comment