Review Roundup: Matt Damon Stars in Action Adventure THE MARTIAN

Matt Damon stars in the new action-adventure film, THE MARTIAN.

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney's safe return.

Based on a best-selling novel, and helmed by master director Ridley Scott, THE MARTIAN features a star studded cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Donald Glover.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Matt Tamanini, Broadwayworld.com: Damon's performance in the film is strong, hitting all of the proper notes, but again, that's not what this movie is about. THE MARTIAN's drama comes from the odyssey that one man takes to find his way home; this is an interplanetary Homeric epic.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: "The Martian" has sweep but not the vanity that creeps into many large productions, turning them into bloated vehicles for directorial self-aggrandizement. Mr. Damon's Everyman quality (he's our Jimmy Stewart) helps scale the story down, but what makes this epic personal is Mr. Scott's filmmaking, in which every soaring aerial shot of the red planet is answered by the intimate landscape of a face. There's a touch of Cecil B. DeMille in his cinematic DNA (for better and occasionally for worse), though, like many who saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" during their esthetically formative years, there's even more Stanley Kubrick. But Mr. Scott is very much his own artist, one whose reputation as a visual stylist has at times obscured that his great, persistent theme is what it means to be human.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: You won't find a space epic that's more fun to geek out at than The Martian. Director Ridley Scott rediscovers the light touch he's been missing in recent misfires such as Prometheus, The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings. Scott's film version of the bestselling debut novel by space nerd Andy Weir fires on all cylinders, fueled by a heroically entertaining performance from Matt Damon. OK, it's not a deep-think piece like Interstellar (in which Damon had a malevolent cameo) or 2001: A Space Odyssey. And there are no little green monsters busting out of human cavities like in Scott's Alien. But The Martian, with a you-are-there script by Drew Goddard, works you over without a hint of dystopian doom in all of its bracing 142 minutes. This suspenseful survival tale, smartass to its core, slaps a smile on your face that you'll wear all the way home.

Peter Debruge, Variety: With ideas like cryogenic sleep and warp speed, the movies have a tendency to make space travel look easy. Not Ridley Scott's "The Martian," an enthralling and rigorously realistic outer-space survival story in which Matt Damon plays a NASA botanist stranded on the Red Planet after a sandstorm forces his crewmates to abort mission. Like Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Damon's "right stuff" hero has to get by on his own wits and "science the sh-" out of his predicament. It won't be easy, but it is possible - and that's the exhilarating thrill of both Andy Weir's speculative-fiction novel and screenwriter Drew Goddard's "science fact" adaptation. Considering that the United States hasn't launched a manned space mission since 2011, "The Martian" should do far more than just make Fox a ton of money; it could conceivably rekindle interest in the space program and inspire a new generation of future astronauts.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair: If you are worried about heading to space again withRidley Scott after the grim, muddled Prometheus, fear not. His new space yarn, The Martian, based on the science-heavy novel by Andy Weir, is a pure delight, a tense survival tale leavened by an abundance of geeky wit and an array of fine actors at their snappy best. It's the first Ridley Scott picture in a long time that feels energized by its scope and ambition rather than buried under it.

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post: Either way, at a time when a kid can get busted for bringing a DIY clock to school, presidential candidates seriously debate the value of vaccinations and even the Pope can't win over global warming skeptics, the problem-solving valorized in "The Martian" provides a simultaneously stirring and spirited example of how cool science can be. As NASA-Hollywood plots go, this one is worth lapping up like all the water on Mars.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: The auteur spirit presiding over this movie is Ron Howard. It's all about cheerful and unreflective persistence, finding ingenious ways of surviving, improvising with what's available and making the best of things, having a laugh and never giving up. We see boffins racing against time as they try things out with bits of cardboard. Houston, we have a solution! This unassuming approach is refreshing after Christopher Nolan's overblown Interstellar, whose visionary scientific accuracy we were invited to take very seriously indeed. The tone is different in Drew Goddard's cheeky screenplay here. In his messages and video-diary log entries, Watney's adverb of choice is "luckily". "Luckily, the camera can spin!" he says, describing his ways of transmitting still images from the alphabet to communicate with his base. "Luckily, I have the greatest minds on the planet helping me," he later says. And when it comes to the challenge of growing his own food on the red planet, he says with a grin: "Luckily, I'm a botanist!" It's the closest this film comes to just flat-out taking the mickey.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: An unpretentious popcorn classic that builds to a white-knuckle climax, the nerd-driven space opera "The Martian' is the best thing that either Matt Damon and director Ridley Scott have done in years.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: If you had to boil Ridley Scott's The Martian down to five words, you could do worse than this: "Matt Damon lost in space." Thankfully, I have more room than that. And I'm glad I do, because Scott's sci-fi adventure is the kind of film you leave the theater itching to tell your friends to see. Like Apollo 13 and Gravity, it turns science and problem solving into an edge-of-your-seat experience.

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Ridley Scott goes back to the future, a familiar destination for him, and returns in fine shape in The Martian. Although technically science fiction by virtue of its being largely set on a neighboring planet, this smartly made adaptation of Andy Weir's best-selling novel is more realistic in its attention to detail than many films set in the present, giving the story the feel of an adventure that could happen the day after tomorrow. Constantly absorbing rather than outright exciting, this major autumn Fox release should generate muscular business worldwide.

Photo Credit: Official Website

To post a comment, you must register and login.