Starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler and Donald Sutherland

Directed by James Grey

Fox, out now

 

Astronaut Roy McBride travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet.

James Grey’s (The Lost City of Z) sci-fi opus is clearly in the right wheelhouse for this website and reviewer, and yet, there’s something unsatisfying about it. The effects are great – the lunar and Martian landscapes are wonderfully realised – the sound mix is all-encompassing, but there’s something missing. You don’t feel engaged as a viewer and it all just unfolds in front of you.

It’s the near future (though the presence of bases on the Moon and Mars suggests it’s actually a long way off) and Earth is being bombarded by bursts from space that threaten the existence of the planet. In steps super astronaut Roy McBride (a stoic Brad Pitt) and he’s informed that his father (a national hero) may actually still be alive, although he’s been MIA for 16 years, 13 years into a mission. It’s his top secret mission that is creating the disturbances, and he needs to be stopped.

McBride sets off on his adventures, hopping from Earth to Mars to beyond, nursing a cover story, and discovering that there’s even bigger secrets to be unravelled. And that’s about it really. Pitt is fine as our hero, struggling with the fallout of his father abandonment issues, but the story just plods along from one locale to the next with various slices of jeopardy and drama that resolve themselves entirely as expected. There’s one shocking moment (I’ll say no more) but I still don’t really understand what happened there!

Back in 2000, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland played astronauts in Space Cowboys, and while the dates don’t quite sync with this timeline, it could be argued that this is an extension of that story, with both actors playing similar roles. And that flight of fantasy is far more imaginative than what you’ll see on screen here.

Verdict: The production of any serious sci-fi movie with a sizeable budget is to be admired, but effects alone don’t make an engaging movie. There’s nothing wrong with Ad Astra, it’s just very nuts and bolts filmmaking with nothing to put it in the same league as Gravity or Interstellar, let along 2001: A Space Odyssey (or 2010!) Disappointing. 7/10

Nick Joy