Genre: Adventure, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Donald Sutherland, Kimberly Elise, Loren Dean, Donnie Keshawarz, Sean Blakemore, Bobby Nish, LisaGay Hamilton, John Finn, John Ortiz, Freda Foh Shen
Review: 2019's 'Ad Astra', starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga and Donald Sutherland, was supposed to be "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie," according to director James Gray. What ended up on film was an unfocused, disappointing, 2 hour ramble punctuated by a few impressive special effects sequences.
The title, Ad Astra, means "to the stars" in Latin, but perhaps it should have been named 'Ad Tedium'. Set in the near future, the plot follows astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) who is tapped by the U.S. Space Command to travel to the outer edge of the solar system in search of his missing father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) who was in command of a deep space mission to find intelligent life.
Space Command lost contact with this deep space mission, dubbed the 'Lima Project', 16 years prior, which apparently wasn't a problem for anybody because no one thought to follow up on this missing, multi-billion dollar space mission until mysterious power surges started blowing up transformers and frying circuit boards back on Earth.
Space Command identified the source of these surges as the Lima Project, now in orbit around Neptune, and finally decided they had better do something about their missing space craft and crew. What follows is a travelogue of the tediums of fictionalized space travel.
The filmmakers were clearly trying to channel the wonder and awe captured so aesthetically in 2001: A Space Odyssey. They failed. Long, monotonous shots of model rockets floating around against a black backdrop do more to fill up runtime than advance the plot. In between these space scenes are monologues by Brad Pitt's character as he periodically describes his emotional condition via radio to some off-screen Space Command psychologist who must constantly approve him 'mission ready'. These monologues are supposed to help illustrate Pitt's emotional struggle, but it sounds more like he's lying on a job interview.
There are a few points where it seems to occur to the filmmaker that he can't have 2 solid hours of model rockets and Brad Pitt doing monologues, so he sprinkles in a little action that has nothing to do with the plot. About an hour into the slog McBride (Pitt's character) is chased across the surface of the moon by bandits in moon buggies. The moon buggy chase comes out of nowhere, is explained away by one line of script about "the war", and has no consequences other than killing off a couple minor characters who were introduced for the explicit purpose of dying. The entire scene seems to be designed just to give Brad Pitt an excuse to engage in a laser fight. The moon bandits and "the war", whatever it is, are never mentioned again.
In fact, the most intriguing parts of the plot; the mysterious surges, the top secret energy source on the Lima Project which is causing them, and the ultimate goal of the deep space mission, are all almost completely ignored. The entire point of the odyssey seems to be an emotional confrontation between Pitt's character and his father, Tommy Lee Jones, which ultimately comes to nothing. That plot thread could have easily been edited down to a tight 20 minutes.
And to add insult to injury, the movie is littered with bad physics. Obvious mistakes and oversights that ruin the authenticity the film is striving for. If you're looking for "the most realistic depiction of space travel that's been put in a movie," you might want to try re-watching Apollo 13.