《星际救援》

The film is set in a near future when interplanetary travel is not just a thing but a source of hope; other worlds might offer remedies* for Earth’s troubles. The search for intelligent life has been underway at least since Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) led the Lima Project to the outer edges of the solar system 30 years ago, only to disappear, along with his ship and crew. Roy (Brad Pitt) was a teenager when his father went missing, and, cast in his shadow, has grown up idolizing* him.

He’s become a respected astronaut, but he feels like a hired hand. The bosses at SpaceCom, a government agency posed as a private company, value him for his composure*. Why wouldn’t they? His pulse has never topped 80, and they don’t know about his inner anger.

Those higher-ups believe that Clifford is still alive, in the vicinity of* Neptune — and not only alive but up to no good, the mastermind of terrible deeds that are destroying Earth’s atmosphere and could destabilize the solar system. Because of his personal connection to Clifford, Roy is first chosen for the mission of trying to communicate with the renegade* and then dismissed from the assignment.

Though Roy has a number of encounters on his travels from Earth to the Moon to Mars and beyond, his is basically a lonely journey.

Until a welcoming glimpse of Earth late in the proceedings, Roy’s home planet is viewed in terms of its sorry exports: urban congestion* on the Moon, space-travel animal experimentation, a messy Martian outpost manned by Natasha Lyonne.

A number of Roy’s encounters are little more than devices for dispensing information, cluing him in* to the truth about his father and his ill-fated mission.

Donald Sutherland delivers a beautiful mix of warning and regret as a retired colleague of Clifford’s, and Ruth Negga is all grief-fueled determination as a Mars native with a connection to the doomed Lima Project.

In the minimally conceived role of Roy’s estranged wife Eve, Liv Tyler has little chance to make an impression.

This sci-fi spin on “Heart of Darkness” is a self-conscious movie about a self-conscious man, a dutiful son who’s increasingly aware of how out of place he feels - in the organization he works for and in his own skin.(SD-Agencies)