"Red Planet" is to "Mission To Mars" as "Armageddon" was to "Deep Impact". If you want slow moving, thought provoking cinema then see "Mission to Mars", but if you want action packed slick filmmaking then catch "Red Planet".

Val Kilmer stars along with the sexy Carrie Anne-Moss as two members of a six person crew on their way to the planet Mars to make sure that people from Earth could live there. It is the year 2057 and Earth has been over populated and polluted. Benjamin Bratt, Terence Stamp and Tom Sizemore are also along for the ride.

More stuff happens in the first twenty minutes of this film than happened in two hours of "Mission to Mars". After a crash landing on the surface of the planet the men have to find a way to get to the base camp that had been set up, Moss is left in the ship so she can try to fix it after they had some mechanical problems. Once on the ground you have your basic macho stuff going on between the men as to who is in charge, there are also some strange creatures on the planet which will remind you of the little beetle type crawlers from "The Mummy". Something else happens as well but I do not want to give it away.

The movie is about Moss trying to get the ship ready for flight back to Earth and Kilmer trying to get the crew off of Mars and back to the ship. It doesn't get preachy or hokey as "Mission to Mars" did. The sound is extraordinary and the effects are very strong as well. It is worth it to take a trip to the "Red Planet".