Ad Astra is a dramatic sci-fi thriller starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride who is drafted on a top-secret mission after a series of electromagnetic pulses threaten to unravel global civilization in the near future. The possible culprit behind these pulses is Roy’s father, Clifford McBride, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Roy finds himself traversing through our solar system in an effort to find out why his father’s deep space experiment is causing so much damage, and in turn confronts the emotional damage in his own life. The cast also includes Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland, Ruth Negga, John Ortiz, Kimberly Elise, Natasha Lyonne and Jamie Kennedy. Director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) helms from his own script, co-written by Ethan Gross.
The two most remarkable things about Ad Astra are its dedication to verisimilitude in regards to space travel, and the steady, laser-focused performance of its lead actor Brad Pitt. After a nerve-wracking opener which finds Roy McBride tumbling from an impossibly tall space antenna, self-destructing from the energy wave of the pulse, we see in him the kind of steely demeanor it takes to survive events like those. Indeed, in real life, astronauts have to be psychologically sturdy enough to remain calm in life or death situations, like the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano whose spacesuit leak nearly drowned him during a spacewalk.
As the film progress, we see more of life in the near-future and how space travel has become commoditized, corporatized and dangerous due to interplanetary strife. It’s an understated feat of world-building, as the film chooses to keep its focus on Roy McBride, his search for his father and the challenges of keeping his emotional state from crumbling apart as he’s pushed to the outer edges of our solar system. The spectacle, which is minimal, organic and effective, is all in service to the narrative and the characters; more genre films would be better served by this approach.
Due to the withdrawn nature of Roy McBride, and the structure of the film which pushes his psyche as it goes on, unseating him from a position of trust and steadiness, the audience doesn’t get a true sense of his inner life until later on. We catch glimpses of the toll his space career takes on his home life and loved ones, as well as hints of a turbulent childhood.
However, the cerebral presentation of Ad Astra may be off-putting and, to be blunt, boring for audiences used to more straightforward adventuring. Personally, I didn’t mind this too much; McBride isn’t a suave, charismatic swashbuckler in space but a professional doing his job and serving his duty. Those who are patient will be rewarded by a film equal parts tense thriller and family drama, expertly using astronomical distance as a metaphor for emotional distance. All that said, this same emotional distance does it no favors in the first half of the film.
Kudos should go out to Nolan veteran Hoyte von Hoytema, the cinematographer for Interstellar, as well as production designer Kevin Thompson and costume designer Albert Wolsky whose efforts ground the film in matter-of-fact realism (Thompson and Wolsky previously collaborated on Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman). Max Richter’s score also deserves special mention, with an assist from composers Lorne Balfe, Nils Frahm and Robert Charles Mann, a frequent collaborator of Brad Pitt.
The prestige of the cast and crew speak for itself, but without the exploration of toxic masculinity and the damage it causes, which in turn is mirrored by the societal ruination of space exploration, it would all be for naught. Ad Astra proves there is still room for adult science fiction, that can be riveting without being a megabudget extravaganza or merely relegated to a streaming service at home. Hopefully, Fox can still produce these films under the wing of its new corporate parent Disney, and while making the case for its continued existence, give us more cinema like Ad Astra.
Rating: 4/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
ABOUT 20TH CENTURY FOX’S AD ASTRA
A paranoid thriller in space that follows Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) on a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.
Ad Astra is directed by James Gray, written by James Gray & Ethan Gross, and produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, p.g.a., Jeremy Kleiner, p.g.a., James Gray, p.g.a., Anthony Katagas, p.g.a., Rodrigo Teixeira, p.g.a., and Arnon Milchan.
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Website: https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/ad-astra
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Ad Astra is in theaters September 20, 2019 in 2D, Dolby Cinema and IMAX with a run-time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some violence and bloody images, and for brief strong language.
