director
John Carpenter
screenwriters
Larry Sulkis
John Carpenter
producer
Sandy King
cinematographer
Gary B. Kibbe
music
Anthrax
Buckethead
John Carpenter
editor
Paul Warschilka
cast
Natasha Henstridge (Melanie Ballard)
Ice Cube (Desolation Williams)
Jason Statham (Jericho Butler)
Clea DuVall (Bashira Kincaid)
Pam Grier (Helena Braddock)
Joanna Cassidy (Whitlock)
Richard Cetrone (Big Daddy Mars)
Rodney A. Grant (Tres)
Peter Jason (McSimms)
Robert Carradine (Rodale)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 98m
u.s.
release: August 24,
2001
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other john
carpenter films
reviewed on this website:
- escape
from new york
- escape
from l.a.
- halloween
- the
thing
- vampires
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Cheese can be flavorful or
rancid -- the kind of cheese one sees on movie screens, as well
as the edible kind -- and John Carpenter, in his previous few
films, had specialized in tasty cheese: unapologetic slices of
genre entertainment for those who like it with edge and style.
Vampires,
despite its title, was really a grungy, bad-attitude Western,
and even Carpenter's much-maligned sequel/remake Escape
from L.A. could be taken as a satire of itself. At his
best, Carpenter works with a triple sense of intelligence, purpose,
and fun.
Ghosts of Mars is not Carpenter at his best. It may
very well be Carpenter at rock bottom. It lacks the three elements
noted above: intelligence here is as sparse as breathable air
on Mars, the movie feels pointless, and it's almost completely
humorless (except for the derisive chuckles earned by some of
the dialogue -- Carpenter had better jettison his script collaborator
Larry Sulkis pronto). Ironically, Ghosts of Mars arrived
the same weekend as Kevin Smith's Jay
& Silent Bob Strike Back; in both, well-loved cult
directors pay tribute to themselves. But whereas Smith does it
jokingly and self-deprecatingly, Carpenter does it half-heartedly,
as if he had no energy left to do anything except lazily cannibalizing
himself.
We're on Mars, circa 2176;
the red planet has been "terraformed" (made safe for
human habitation) by Earth's "matriarchal" society.
(Does the whole matriarchy angle have any bearing whatsoever
on what goes on in the movie? Nope, except to explain why many
of the cops we see are female. The idea of a matriarchy is intriguing
and completely ignored.) A bunch of cops, led by Natasha Henstridge
(Species),
are assigned to transport a dangerous criminal known as Desolation
Williams (Ice Cube). Ah, Carpenter and his bad-ass street names
for anti-heroes: Napoleon Wilson (Assault on Precinct 13),
Snake Plissken (the Escape films), and now Desolation,
who turns out to be one of the few humans left alive in Chryse,
the Martian town where he'd been stowed in jail.
Seems most of the humans have
been possessed by Martian entities, who turn them evil, compel
them to ravage their flesh, and force them to look like the extras
in a bad Ozzy Osbourne video. Natasha and her cops (including
Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, and Jason Statham from Snatch)
and Desolation and his fellow inmates join forces against the
nasty Martian drones, who enjoy decapitating people and dangling
the corpses upside down when they're not sticking needles into
their own flesh. Say this for the Martians -- they know how to
party.
This is recognizably a Carpenter
film in theme (and plot) only. It feels like a shallow, made-for-cable
wannabe-Carpenter ripoff. Anyone could have directed most of
it; there's a "sting" here and there as figures pop
into the frame suddenly, but Carpenter's detachment even extends
to his musical score, which leans heavily on Anthrax crap-metal
guitar riffs that dependably go whannggg ... whonnggg
every time the Martians or their stupid-looking leader (what
is it lately with Carpenter and head villains who look
like the lead singers of hair-metal bands?) show up.
The plot is entirely about
how this ragtag group fights the siege, but Carpenter did it
cheaper and better 25 years ago in Assault on Precinct 13.
This time he also adopts a pointless flashback structure -- sometimes
flashbacks within flashbacks -- and falls into the same
self-spoiling trap that Book
of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 did: if you're watching a story
being told in flashback by a character in the present, you
know that character survives! And here, you also figure everyone
else dies except Ice Cube, who is first-billed on the posters.
Carpenter, as always, gets the very top billing; the movie, on
the screen as well as in the ads, is fully titled John Carpenter's
Ghosts of Mars. A more apt title might've been Alan Smithee's
Ghosts of Mars.*
* "Alan Smithee," of course,
being the pseudonym taken by directors who don't want their name
on a film. Some readers have reported they didn't get the reference,
so I clarify here.
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