"Ad Astra": Movie Review
"Ad Astra" (translated as "to the stars" in Latin) is an empty, outer space drama, with a lead performance by Brad Pitt that is as half baked as the majority of ideas spewed onto the screen. What's remaining is a beautifully shot and hauntingly scored Sci-Fi epic, with little to say.
A fearless astronaut, Roy McBride (Pitt) goes on a journey 30 years after his father (Tommy Lee Jones), went AWOL following a mysterious mission named the Lima Project.
As Pitt mopes around the universe searching for answers, in his most miscast performance to date, director James Gray ("The Lost City Of Z", "The Immigrant") has failed to capture his ideas in a bottle.
Too baboons floating in space, and society on earth inhabiting the moon, Grays ideas are present and welcome, but they rarely (if ever) are substantive with any meaning. And I couldn't help but snicker at some of it's absurd contrivances, that really start hitting the ground in the second half, and expose its ineptitude at telling a believable tale.
If there is a couple of positives, they lie in the beautiful score by Max Richter, and the stunning showcase of cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema. The combination of Richter and Hoytema's vision is a standout and is unfortunately marred by Grays direction.
Some potentially engaging ideas fall by the way side, as "Ad Astra" tumbles by a forced performance by Pitt and equally poor direction by Gray. A film with a plethora of interesting theories, is locked behind its perpetual stubbornness to grow.
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