Latter day Carpenter is hard to get your head around.
He’s one of many modern day filmmaking geniuses that lost favor in Hollywood and after a point his films show that. He and Romero had similar careers in that neithe stopped being good directors, they just lost the funding and support of a system that had changed enough to make it hard to make the movies they wanted with the budgets they were given. I would argue that neither made bad films at the end of their filmmaking days but they just weren’t making movies that captured their earlier days and never lived up to their talent.
I can’t help but wonder if some of what we see late in their careers (not to speak of Carpenter as if he’s dead but speaking specifically of his movies here) is as much about their inability to fully make the movies they saw in their minds as it is their burn out. They had been indie renegades that worked long enough to see the larger studios devour the smaller ones and the market moved towards direct to video, which was still seen as consisting of cheap movies. With GHOSTS OF MARS we find Carpenter at the end of his career. He was still making a go of it but there isn’t the excitement or passion of his earlier movies. This feels like him going through the motions and doing the best he could. In many ways it’s him remaking ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 with a sci-fi bend. There is too much of ASSAULT in the film though to make it wholly its own. There are flashes of some interesting things but he was tring to make a bit of an epic on an indie budget. The chemistry between characters feels forced. The writing is corny. The music feels so forced that it doesn’t feel natural to the film. I will say though that where once the main ‘ghost’ design seemed painfully like Marilyn Manson, and it still is similar, it aged beter than I’d have thought.
The story of the film is pretty basic Western stuff – the law comes to town to pick up a criminal and they are waylaid by the indigenous peoples who want them out of there and want their land back. There is a heavy Native American inspiration here, though there’s just as much Bradbury. It’s Western meets Martian Chronicles. It’s not a deep story, and it’s all set up for stand off action.
Ice Cube is game for the role but isn’t much of an actor and frankly, no one here is very good. Their game, but it all feels like everyone was going through the motions. As if they were all stuck doing the movie or they were doing it as a favor.
There are some great ideas, like I mentioned, and some interesting set pieces, but it feels like a direct to video movie and is shot that way. It is a by the numbers film with little flair and shootin gwith a very standard close up, mid shot, long shot, close up, paint by numbers. But it all feels shallow. There is an obvious set up for an examination of colonialism but it never gets deeper than the surface. It is a movie about bravado and power, showing even in a matriatchy domination and dominion rule the day.
And still, saying all that, it’s not a bad movie.
It’s decent.
It moves well, it has tons of action, has some decent gore, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The end is a bit corny and very Hollywood, but it’s not terrible.
That’s almost the trouble with the whole thing, it’s not terrible, and it’s not great, it’s just…decent. It’s a middling action sci-fi movie with no heart, and that’s the biggest sin.
There’s no real heart here. No real humanity.
The film is a mimic of its story where it’s been invaded by something without any humanity to it.
I still dig it for what it is, which is a Carpenter film and he has an interesting cast and still shows why he is a master.
3 out of 5
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