Crimson Force (2005)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Please don't spend money on this.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The year is 2037 and corporations are still running the planet Earth. Advised to abort the first human mission to the planet Mars, due to some spaceship problems, hard-nosed crew leader C. Thomas Howell (as Kyle Baskin) insists on landing anyway. David Flores and his crew survive shaky cameras and their very rough touchdown, but their spaceship needs repairs. As if that wasn't enough to worry about, they learn a traitor is present, intent on sabotaging the mission. The red planet looks deserted, but looks can be deceiving; there may be Martians lurking about. Not knowing what to do, Mr. Howell seems angry. We also follow handsome "Baywatch" lifeguard David Chokachi (as Nick Ambrose). The women are sexy. There is enough here to make good TV movie, but "Crimson Force" fails to put its scattered pieces together.*** Crimson Force (6/4/05) David Flores ~ David Chokachi, C. Thomas Howell, Julia Rose, Terasa Livingstone

This was such a bad movie, bad acting and just doesn't make a whole lot of since.C. Thomas Howell is such a bad actor. He was good in only one movie that I saw him in and that was the hitcher. Everything else is just so bad.1. A corporation is going to send out a billion dollar investment with a guy who is criminally insane at the helm and then mid way threw helped murder a crew member because he is paranoid.2. What is crew members eating at there stations. getting greasy fingers and hands all in the mix of mechanical parts.3. An advanced civilization which seams that doesn't know whats going on? Some foreign entities walk right through there front door and they don't know about it? Director:David Flores - Writer:Rob Mecarini - OK you two is this your first movie. It doesn't have to be good as Star Trek, Star Wars, SG1, Battestar Galactica. Even the movie the day the earth stood still from 1951 was better executed than this movie.You have to make movies believable, with a hint of truth and that it could happen and not some paranoid murderous ship captain.The very first sentence in the movie; Sir something is happening, he didn't say report, or what is happening, he said keep it steady, what????? You would think you are million miles from home, you would want to know every little creak and noise going on because there isn't a good year on every planet to get your ship fixed.

This really is Science Fiction by numbers - it feels like it was written by someone who has read books on how to write SF, but never actually seen any.The "World Government vs The Corporations" backstory is laughably juvenile it its monochrome simplicity and - considering this was written in 2005 - the "future history" it tries to establish is woefully naive and dated. It's made clear at the start that this is the first manned mission to Mars. Yet the crew behave throughout as if crash-landing in Cydonia, discovering an ancient civilization, and meeting alien life (and having sex with it), constitutes no more than a rather busy day at the office.All that said, it's engagingly played by all involved, the moral ambiguities are quite interesting, and everything holds together just about well enough to remain watchable. A thoroughly missable movie, but a generally inoffensive one.

OMFG, when are they ever going to stop making these "Man has screwed up Earth and now we have to look elsewhere" stinkers. It's either that or an evil corporation and or US governments genetic weapon gets out of control and a giant mutated __________ (Insert animal, insect or germ here) starts eating people and/or towns. Or even the very, very old and worn out Body Snatcher premise, these days with the above mentioned corporation/US government involved, of course. At least Mission to Mars and Stargate (Movie and TV show) didn't fall into this cliché morass and the TV version of Stargate added an original twist to the Body Snatcher theme. 90% of everything in this pathetic waste of recording media, tape or film, was lifted from the old 1940s, 50s and 60s sci-fi movies where some hapless travelers are abducted by an evil civilization on the moon and held prisoner because they don't want the idiot (as usual) Earthers to know about them. All that was changed was the location, Mars, and why the explorers were there in the first place, we used up Earth, again.As for acting, Tony Amendola did the best he could with what he was given. His expression through the whole ordeal was like, "God, when will this end so I can get back to something exiting" (Stargate SG1). Everybody else would have been better "time-traveled" back to the movies in the above mentioned time periods.Please, I implore you, if you must watch TV and all there is on is a Flipper marathon on TV Land, stay away from this crud. Flipper had more substance AND action, even in re-runs.Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to regain my composure after contemplating this cinematographic turd.