Escape from Mars Reviews

Despite the misgivings of their support team, a five-man mission to Mars takes place on June 4, 2015. Keeping his divorce problems to himself, selfless leader John Rank (Peter Outerbridge) shepherds his small crew through one technical crisis after another, including the loss of manual control. Although Rank's second-in-command Lia Poirier (Allison Hossack) supports his decisions, he meets steady opposition from civilian gemologist Andrea Singer (Kavan Smith) who represents the pragmatic interests of the consortium funding this exploratory journey. Upon landing on the Red Planet, the crew busies itself taking core samples and soon discovers an eerie phosphorescence emanating from a cave. While understandably interested in determining whether it's an actual life-form or not, the crew has more pressing matters, like dealing with the fact that there may not be enough fuel for all five of them to get home. You'll be willing to travel to Mars to escape this soporific adventure, a UPN TV original. Packaged in the wake of big budget Hollywood fare like MISSION TO MARS and RED PLANET, this low-rent knock-off shows viewers what occurs when bad things happen to good astronauts. You'll learn the answers if you can stay awake, but that might require a meteor shower. Rather than generating suspense, the frequent cross-cutting back to the control room on Earth only dampens what little tension there is. Stuck with half-hearted quarrels and sub-par special effects, viewers will long nostalgically for giant squids from outer space.