[video] "Mars" A Postview, copyright 1996 p-m agapow
On corporate dominated Mars, the all useful fuel "silax" is mined for a huge profit. But a Keeper - one of the company policeman - has been murdered in circumstances that suggest his corruption. His brother and fellow Keeper, the strangely expressionless Caution (!) Templar (played by the strangely expressionless Gruner) travels to Mars to kickbox the baddies into a confession.
You might think that there aren't many SF/F films made. A trip to the video store belies this, with numerous titles slipping unannounced onto the shelves. Surely, one of these must be a hidden gem?
Uh, no. A lot of good films go straight to video, but some scaling law seems to ensure that any SF/F bound on that route is at best mediocre, at worst stygian. Why pick "Mars"? Well, Gruner is the martial artist who played the lead in "Nemesis". As terrible as that picture was, Gruner showed some promise. His acting was subdued but better than wooden with some flair for action. In time he might evolve past Jean Claude van Damme in the SF-action roles.
But not in this role. Hampered by a lobotomised script, a poor supporting cast, tepid direction and his own underacting, Gruner is throwing his career into full reverse. (And strangely, while in "Nemesis" he used his own voice, here he seems to be dubbed by someone else.) "Mars" is not even gloriously bad or overly-ambitious, it merely inspires indifference.
Strike one against it, is that while the script shows signs of a bigger project, the grander themes have been roughly edited out, sometimes leaving dangling threads. (The Keepers are apparently a quasi-religious order with its own agenda. The Templars have some old family conflict. But these ideas don't lead anywhere.) Strike two is the sheer laziness of the story telling. Throw in a sympathetic female doctor, a scuzzy thief, a smooth corporate apparatchik and in Hollywood shorthand (with no development or surprises) you know they will become the feisty love interest, the comic sidekick and the cold-blooded enemy. We learn of a horrific plague affecting the miners by Caution walking past a quarantine room full of victims with huge oozing sores, retching blood. Scenes in the Martian Domes appear to have been filmed in a hospital basement.
Even these problems could be overcome by some competent direction. But (Strike three! You're out!) some scenes are constructed in such a way as to make them hard to follow. In fights it is difficult to know who is where and doing what. At times Caution wanders around, seemingly so (a la James Bond) the baddies can attack him and reveal part of the plot to him. It's difficult to develop much feeling for a film that does so little to hook you in.
Possibly worth looking at, if you're stuck on an airflight with no reading material. [**/ok] and early morning TV on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"Mars" Starring Olivier Gruner, Shari Bellafonte. Released 1996.
------ paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]
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