Plausible suspense, uplifting climax.

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2016)

I hadn't seen anything beyond the first trailer and the movie posters for The Martian. Perhaps this has enabled me to review it through a perspective less jaded that some. For what it's worth, it's a good thing.
The plight of marooned astronaut Mark Watney is portrayed as pretty straight-up dire based on the circumstances. First, stuck on Mars, a lifeless neighbor to Earth. Next, presumed dead with no initial hope of rescue. Then, beset with a finite amount of supplies to sustain him, he must resort to taking vacuum-sealed Thanksgiving potatoes and farming them in the human waste from himself and his colleagues. An attempt to launch an unmanned craft to crash-land into Mars and provide Watney with supplies aborts shortly after liftoff; echoes of the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia arose instantly as Sean Bean's character uttered the dreaded command in mission control, "Lock the doors", just as his real-life counterpart LeRoy Cain had on that fateful morning of February 1, 2003.
Then things get really difficult.
All in all a fairly tense, yet overall uplifting look at humanity's investment in a fellow human being whom many might at first glance consider beyond hope. Thanks to numerous deficiencies in the institutional culture of NASA, the space program today is nowhere near that imagined by The Martian.
Manned space exploration has been tainted by the grave losses of Challenger in 1996 and Columbia in 2003. Yet this film serves to prove that given drive, determination, collaboration, and discipline, the best humanity has to offer can be brought forth in a united effort to shake a valiant fist at fate and save someone seemingly beyond all hope.
Let's hope that the driving forces behind these fictitious crew, managers, and bureaucrats will inspire their real-world counterparts to propel our fledgling space program to new heights, rather than wallow in the sorrows of the fallen.