In whose face?

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2016)

When Matt Damon's character utters the words, "In your face Neil Armstrong", I immediately thought, "Whoa, hold it right there"; "The Martian" just broke the fourth wall.
I couldn't get over the sudden flash that Matt Damon was an actor on a sound stage, who was probably waiting for the lunch break where a team of caterers would have prepared a meal to the star's explicit dietary instructions. Neil Armstrong on the other hand, was a man who put it all on the line to land a flimsy spacecraft 240,000 miles away on the surface of the moon. He was one of a band of extraordinary men who really did what this movie pretends to do.
Maybe it was the script, but someone should have questioned the reference; it just comes down to a simple matter of respect.
That aside, "The Martian" has a fascinating premise: after being accidentally left behind on Mars, a lone survivor, Mark Watney (Matt Damon), uses his ingenuity to survive until rescued in a desperate mission. However, I feel the film has a sterile edge it didn't need to have.
The movie it most reminded me of was Robert Zemeckis' "Castaway" where Tom Hanks' character, Chuck Noland, also scienced the sh*t out of his environment when he was stranded on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. The big difference, other than being set on different planets, is that "Castaway" has more heart. Chuck Noland has a back-story that eventually leads to scenes of reunion and parting that are heartbreaking. Also, look at the power of the scenes in "Interstellar" when Matthew McConaughey's character interacts with his family when he is light years away in space.
"The Martian" is more all business with some rather forced one-liners. There is slickness to the whole thing that works against emotion. Watney has little back-story other than one reference to his parents. He is such an insular guy he may as well have been a replicant.
But the film has interesting detail, great special effects and it does have tension. If the film has a heart it's actually in the scenes of the crew on the Hermes and back at NASA as they try to figure out how to rescue Watney – scenes that owe more than a little to Ron Howard's "Apollo 13".
The rescue at the end packs a punch. However I still feel the film could have hit harder than it does. Although it's a return to form for Ridley Scott, it's more brittle than movies such as "Blade Runner", "Gladiator" or the underrated "Kingdom of Heaven". At the very least, it might help erase memories of "The Counselor".