Mars Express

Mars Express

In 2200, private detective Aline Ruby and her android partner Carlos Rivera are hired by a wealthy businessman to track down a notorious hacker. On Mars, they descend deep into the underbelly of the planet's capital city where they uncover a darker story of brain farms, corruption, and a missing girl who holds a secret about the robots that threatens to change the face of the universe.

  • Released: 2023-05-17
  • Runtime: 88 minutes
  • Genre: Action, Mystery
  • Stars: Geneviève Doang, Thomas Roditi, Léa Drucker, Mathieu Amalric, Daniel Njo Lobé, Marie Bouvet, Sébastien Chassagne, Marthe Keller, Usul, Nicolas Justamon, Jérémie Bédrune, Thierry Jahn, Serge Faliu, Eilias Changuel, Barbara Delsol, Nathalie Karsenti, Delphine Braillon, Emmanuel Bonami, Martial Le Minoux, Marie Chevalot
  • Director: Jérémie Périn
 Comments
  • glock78 - 25 May 2024
    From shallow and derivative to downright stupid
    Barely a veneer of science thinly painted over third-rate crime fiction, told poorly, without insight or idea it would want to convey, while aping other, older, now even classical examples of the genre.

    Or in other words, it's like a child or an AI copied Ghost in the Shell, trying to conceal that by splicing in "adult" scenes or themes it lacked understanding of. And those are just the thematic and conceptual crimes of this product - cause this is not art but merely something produced for consumption. Content if you will. Mere information masquerading as expression.

    On the artistic level, this would be some pretty good animation back in the 1990s. Today, it is clearly a cheap 3D animated product, shaded to appear hand-animated. So, no artistry there. Just a lot of manual and machine labor.

    Plotwise it is clearly a pile of disjointed scenes, poorly strung together by a paper-thin excuse for a mystery which, within the confines of the story - should not and could not exist. From corpses rotting in ceilings where police can see through walls, 3D cameras literally everywhere but also absent everywhere or there'd be no story, all the way to robots suddenly having a religion and an afterlife - everything feels copied and pasted or just tacked on. Even the title has NOTHING to do with the story, plot, themes or the ideas of the product. It is just tacked on. Something like "Mars Escape" (20 seconds of thinking about plot will give you that) would at least imply some kind of a thematic connection to it all... but even such simple ideas are beyond the reach of the people or AI making this product.

    There is a lack of cohesion to the story or its world beyond the actions of main characters, even that being brushed off and forgotten at every turn. Often very awkwardly, particularly in the end, where the makers of this product are desperate to once again hide the obvious copy-pasting from Ghost in the Shell.

    Thus, after presenting a world where there is a clear and obvious representation of life after death (for humans) - story chooses to ignore it because then nothing in it would make sense while at the same time product simply isn't done competently enough to actually explore such themes and ideas. Instead, we are out of nowhere presented with a real and demonstrative religion and afterlife for the robots - and apparently also humans living beyond death, though that is ignored as an option throughout the story, people permanently dying at every turn. Completely ignoring the fact that something like backing up or copying human consciousness into a central computer would be far simpler and a painfully more obvious solution than doing the same backing up with a robot body. Which is clearly presented as common.

    In the end it was all about the big conspiracy where the CEO of the BigMegaRoyaleWithCheese Corp. Inc. Wants to pack all the robots onto a spaceship and send them into space so his biological computers living in jars would sell better - which is beyond idiotic. Particularly considering that it apparently dawned on the writer/director very late in the production that all those robots can't fit onto so few and rather cramped spaceships - so he has robots beam their "minds" onto the ship, leaving a large pile of bodies behind.

    Robot bodies. Also known as, in some cultures, as robots. It's a world where human minds can be copied into robots. Reprogramming robots would be as difficult as sending an over-the-air update to that pile of robot bodies. Also known as robots.

    How will any of that increase the sale of brains in jars? Also, how will a brain in a jar do any physical labor previously done by a robot? Is the CEO a moron? Are all the other people running the company (helpfully showing their faces on a giant screen as they all unanimously vote to kill the CEO in order to hide the mess he created) also complete morons? Is that the message? Capitalism is morons all the way down?

    But hey, what to expect from someone who doesn't know that gravity on Mars is about 38% of that on Earth - something Edgar Rice Burroughs, writer of Tarzan, understood and incorporated into his pulp series about John Carter. Back in 1912.

    Jérémie Périn has presented his ignorance and lack of understanding of both the genre and the subjects he tried to incorporate and dare I say even explore in this almost 90-minute pile of derivative, shallow and moronic waste of time.

    If you are not a robot or AI created to write positive reviews or someone whose brain serves as merely thermal and sound insulation for the oral cavity I'd advise spending that time on something more intellectually and emotionally fulfilling. Like washing dishes or sorting socks.
  • M0n0_bogdan - 11 May 2024
    Mars Express
    Extremely derivative work but in a good way. It reminded me of The Matrix, Terminator, I, Robot, Fifth Element, Blade Runner, Scavengers Reign, Minority Report, Chinatown, Ghost in the Shell and other cyberpunk animes. And these are just a few I didn't even write down.

    But the fact that it is derivative it doesn't matter that much. It's just a very interesting and kinetic animation about robots and robot A. I., all part of a big conspiracy conducted by a cool duo formed of a woman and her partner, Carlos, a human in the body of a robot. I can say I was just absorbed by the story and animation. It's not something new but it's just something I enjoy.
  • Thomas_Davison - 2 September 2023
    Strong world building for an unexpected story
    For many sci-fi animated movies, audience captivation is driven purely by world building. Neon scenes and expansive horizons are often used to draw attention from a weak story. Not so in this beautifully animated sci-fi detective drama. The story finds the perfect balance between much loved detective clichés and unexpected turns in a story line, that has no need for smoothing by over hyped futurism. Despite this, the imaginative graphics cleanly place the viewer into the future, pushing us just far enough into the 'what could be' to retain a believability that compliments the story. This should be on your list of sci-fi movies to see before you die.