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United Kingdom, United States · 2015
Rated PG-13 · 2h 24m
Director Ridley Scott
Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels
Genre Adventure, Drama, Science Fiction
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During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and abandoned by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit, and spirit to signal to Earth that he is alive.
The Martian is ultimately a love letter to the spirit that saw humanity reach for the stars in the first place. When it's channelling that spirit via Damon and witty writing it lifts off, but then can't quite sustain its trajectory in orbit.
It takes a genuine master craftsman to take something as complex and difficult as this and make it look easy, but it also takes an artist with a great ear to take something as dense with exposition as this is and make it practically sing.
As commercial entertainment, The Martian delivers on expectations of a "smart" blockbuster even as it adheres to the formula of a relatively simple feel-good drama. Though "Interstellar" aimed for more ambition, The Martian plays it safer: It's a brainy studio effort that sticks to familiar ground in more ways than one.
A wide-eyed tribute to human ingenuity that packs enough snark to pull itself out of the black hole of earnestness, even if its fuel runs out partway through.
Anchored by another great turn from Matt Damon, The Martian mixes smarts, laughs, weird character bits and tension on a huge canvas. The result is Scott’s most purely enjoyable film for ages.
Screen International by John Hazelton
Visually spectacular and consistently entertaining, Ridley Scott’s space rescue procedural The Martian suffers only from a failure to hit its emotional beats with the amount of force and feeling usually required to make this kind of life-and-death adventure really take off.
The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth
The Martian is the most purely enjoyable picture Scott has made in years. The streamlined narrative and the film’s consistent pacing, aided by a cast who don’t make a wrongfooted move, makes for easy popcorn entertainment.
An enthralling and rigorously realistic outer-space survival story.
It’s a film about micromanaging, fixing things on the fly, and a lot of Ridley’s gruff, technocrat personality shines through.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
The director and screenwriter downplay the conventional melodrama inherent in the situation in favor of emphasizing how practical problems should be addressed with rational responses rather than hysteria, knee-jerk patriotism or selfish expedience.
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Who knew watching one man living alone on a planet would be so interesting? I sure didn't. This film is a genuine look into one man's psyche as he is his only company in a place where conditions are less than ideal. It's not simply a space spectacle, but a man's journey of self as he struggles with tumultuous conditions and even more tumultuous emotions.