Starring: Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge    Directed by: John "What was he thinking" Carpenter

The Story: Wow. This movie really sucked. What made it suck even more than its innate suckiness is that I could have done a lot of other things tonight than watch it. Like pick my nose or clean the crap out of that tray under the fridge. It would have been time better spent.

Lieutenant Ballard is a cop on Mars. She and her compadres, Commander Braddock (Pam Grier), SGT Jericho, Barishi and Descanzo are sent to some small Martian town to collect the well known criminal "Desolation" Williams. Ballard's also a junkie. Of course since this is the future she can't be addicted to any normal drug....its gotta be some space age drug that must provide a helluva trip. I say this because at one point Ice Cube's character, (I'm not typing "Desolation" every time I refer to him....first off its a STUPID nickname, and personally, I hate typing it) tells her she looks high, but I'll be damned if I can tell how he made that determination.

Mars in this movie is pretty much like an American desert. There's a reference to breathing apparatus that allow our heroes to walk around outside without space suits, but that's about it. Even people that hate Schwarzennegger movies will have to admit that the Mars shown in his movie "Total Recall" was more realistic than the Mars in this movie. Heck, the Mars shown on the TV show Babylon Five is more realistic. Anyway, when the cops walk off of the train and into the town they note that there's no one on the streets and that the place seems deserted. So, being movie cops and not portrayals of people with two or three brain cells they split up. But it doesn't take them all too long to find that everyone in the town has been murdered and the bodies are strung up like meat in a butcher shop. The only people they find alive in the town are the occupants of the jail...including Ice Cube and a woman named Prof. Whitlock. Whitlock knows that something is going on and had herself locked up thinking that the jail was the safest place to be. (Ever notice how the Jail always seems to be the safest place to be in some movies? Why is that? Locking yourself in a cell doesn't seem to safe to me. No chance of escape)

While looking for more survivors, SGT Jericho finds that a large group of townspeople have gone mad. they've mutilated their own bodies by cutting themselves and sticking pins and scissors and [unwrite] through their skin. They're led by some guy that looks like the offspring of a KISS member and Marilyn Manson. He also sees that they've captured Commander Braddock and impaled her head on a spike. (along with a lot of other heads!) Jericho meets up with three other guys that have survived and takes them back to the jail where the others have holed up. We find then that these guys are named Uno, Dos and Dres and that they're part of Ice Cube's gang. They free their leader and try to make a power play, but Ballard tricks them into a cell and then forces them to agree to obey her orders. At first Uno is rebellious, but Ballard pulls some karate [unwrite] out and makes him capitulate. (Yeah, like Natasha Henstridge could kick that big black guy's ass)

Whitlock tells them what they're up against. In a nearby town she was an official in some capacity. They discovered a tomb at a mining site and opened it up. (actually, all she did was touch the door and it opened up) Somehow this released the "Ghosts of Mars". The ghosts take over human bodies and then start killing folks. Spread by the wind, the ghosts are traveling and wiping out human colonies as they go. Our heroes decide its better to get the hell out of dodge then stick around. One of the prisoners in the jail has already been taken over so they leave him in the cell as he gleefully starts cutting himself. But escape isn't so easy....the train is held up by a storm (?) so they have to start blowing away Martians in a pretty bland action sequence.

Now, I love action sequences. I really do. Even in a crappy movie they're cool to watch sometimes, just to see a little whoop-ass. But somehow the fights in this movie were dull. Its like the movie knew it was pretty wishy washy so they threw in a lame action fight to keep the viewer awake. Even the part where Ballard gets taken over by the ghosts is pretty lame. No one else recovers from it, but since she takes her mysterious space drugs she somehow "learns" what they want and becomes herself again with no ill-effects. And what the ghosts want is pretty self explanatory....they want the humans off of their planet! Hell, I figured that out myself.

The surviving characters make it to the train when it pulls into the station and make a run for it, but before they get far away, Ballard  figures they should go back and set the town's nuclear reactor to explode and destroy the Martian threat. (seems kind of extreme....I mean they're ghosts, right? Would that kill them? It might destroy the bodies they've taken over, but what about the ghosts?) Ice Cube agrees with this plan, by saying some predictable line about "If I'm a die, I'd rather die fighting.". Geez...if I had a dollar for every time someone says that in a movie....

And that's what they do. They take the train back and once again engage in battle with the Martians yada, yada, yada, narrowly escaping the nuclear explosion as they ride off. And of course only Ice Cube and Ballard survive. Ice Cube takes advantage of a wounded Ballard and escapes the train before reaching civilization. Back at Martian Police HQ, Ballard is debriefed, but her superiors don't believe her crazy story about ghosts and stuff. (This is the future? Don't these people have radios or anything to confirm that some of their colonies have been wiped out?) The movie ends as the Martian ghosts begin to take over the people of the capitol city. Ice Cube appears in Ballard's quarters and tosses her a gun telling her its time to kick some ass. Which seems pretty stupid if you think about it. Killing the host only allows the Martian spirit to jump to another body. Its a no win situation. But I didn't write the movie.

I wasn't kidding when I said this movie sucked. I didn't expect a roller coaster of thrills but I did expect at least a moderately entertaining movie. Nothing really interesting happened. The reason for the Martian rampage was self explanatory and the movie would have been a smidgen better if they didn't bother to try and explain it. It's was also way to contrived....these Martian weirdoes are going on a rampage and killing hundreds of people but no one back at HQ knows about it? I find that way to hard to believe. Just as I find it far too ridiculous that Ballard can't simply call someone to be airlifted out of there rather than wait for the train. Whitlock said she got to the town by modifying a weather balloon and flying away, so we know that air travel is possible. Are you telling me that man has colonized Mars but didn't bother to bring any aircraft?

I won't berate Henstridge for her part in this flick. She's probably trying to shake off the naked chick from Species stigma. But she sure ain't no Ellen Ripley. Ice Cube I think just played himself. Pam Grier was only there for a paycheck. The only character with a personality at all was Jericho. Too bad he got killed. If they make a sequel to this movie he'd be the only character worth renting it for.

Best Lines:  Oops. I can't think of any that stand out. If you've seen the movie, help me out here.

Are you kidding me?

1.) We all know the hooker with a heart of gold is pretty much a stock character, but I think we should add a new one to the list....the gravelly voiced tough-as-nails aussie. I'm sure that most of you b-movie fans can recollect a few flicks where there's always a tough guy Australian (usually played by that guy that's on "JAG"...whatever his name is) with a three day beard. You might not remember the movie or even the character in detail, but its usually an space convict in the group, a really mean soldier or a cop. Sergeant Jericho in this movie is the one. (Correction: the character I mentioned is Jason Statham, and he's english, I believe. Check out the Transporter movies, he stars in 'em)

2.) What's up with all the flashbacks in this movie? Its....annoying. I can't put my infernal finger on any one reason so I can only say that its driving me crazy! I guess in a better movie it would be okay, but dammit, this movie seems to be plodding.

3.) If the cops in real life were as stupid as these cops I'd be a criminal. Riddle me this....if you walked into a town....any town....with a group of coworkers in order to pick up someone as a prisoner....someone that you KNOW is dangerous....would you then decide to split up after you find that pretty much every person in the town has been murdered in the most unspeakable way?

4.) If there's a reference to it in the movie I missed it, but I thought that Mars didn't have an atmosphere that was human friendly? If they mentioned some degree of terraforming I might be able to overlook that, but since they didn't (as I said unless I just missed it) how can the people just walk around with those small breathers. Isn't mars, well, [unwrite]in' cold?

5.) There's no real explanation of where the Martian ghosts came from. Were they spirits of the lost civilization of Mars? That's stupid in itself. If mankind had colonized mars, you'd think they'd have found some reference to a prior civilization well before the movie takes place. Okay, lets say that they are the spirits of a prior civilization though. How'd they get locked up in that tomb? There's no given reason. If they were more effectual enemies I'd blow it off, but they suck. At no time did I feel that the main characters (Ballard, Desolation) were in real danger. The Martians acted like extras from the Road Warrior only with no cars and even less than zero personality. What a waste. At the end of it all you're left with a movie that really amounted to nothing.

Nudity and Sex: None

Huh?:

Descanzo gets his arm cut off by one of the crazy mars ghost guys...but he keeps on fighting. Okay....I can live with that. What I can't live with is the fact that his stump isn't pouring out blood! Was the wound instantly cauterized in some way we didn't see? Didn't the person that wrote that seen ever cut themselves? I've seen more blood come out of a schoolyard fight bloody nose!

Ballard makes the decision to go back to the town after a narrow escape to eradicate the Martian force with a nuclear explosion. Hey! How did she all of a sudden gain the jurisdiction to make a decision like that? Aren't there any radios on this train? Shouldn't she have to report the situation to someone? This isn't like Ripley deciding to blow up the Nostromo....at this point Ballard and friends can make it to relative safety and inform the higher ups of what is going on.

Wherever Ballard was sleeping at the end of the movie, it sure wasn't secure. Desolation just walks in and tosses her a gun. If it was supposed to be police headquarters it makes sense as far as the movie is concerned, because these guys are definitely the Keystone Kops of Space.

By mid movie we all know that if you kill a taken over person the ghost will just jump to another person. Which makes Barishi the stupidest person on Mars. The one prisoner that was possessed is locked in a jail cell and she was told to keep an eye on him. Now, the guy might be taken over by a homicidal killer ghost, but he's in a cell and thus harmless. What's she do? she gets pissed off and shoots him, thus allowing the spirit to jump to a person outside of the cell! Amazingly not one of the others smacks her upside the head yelling "Bitch! What'd ya do that for! Now its loose in here and with us and ALL OF THE WEAPONS!". If I were there there'd have been an extra ghost on Mars after I blew her stupid brainless head off.

The Final Judgment: Too bad I lost all of my old notebooks from my teenage years. When I was thirteen I wrote a story about Mars in the future. Terraformed, the new Mars was colonized but when WWIII occurs on Earth, the Martian colonies devolve into a feudal type society. (it was a weak "Thundarr the Barbarian" type thing) But hey I was only thirteen. But I can assure you that you'd get more sci-fi action kicks out of reading the imaginings of a thirteen year old kid than watching this movie. Compared to that story, Ghosts of Mars doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.