Wonderful character development!

Some things I liked some I did not.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

There is a lot of terribly negative reviews of this movie. I can certainly see why. There are parts of this movie which seem incoherent, unnecessary and silly; I will not lie. The Plot is thin, but the Protagonist, Caution Templar, (Olivier Gruner) gives a performance that is on par with the likes of Chuck Norris or Steven Segal. That may not be your forte, and that is fine. If it isn't, then you may wish to watch something else, if however you like seeing the protagonist kick butt all the way through and not even get touched, this might be for you. Caution Templar is a member of a Mining Company's police force. His brother was as well. Caution is there to investigate his brother's disappearance and death. He kick-boxes his way through henchmen and finds out why his brother is killed. On his way he meets Doc Halliday (Shari Bellfonte) and they work together. He also meets an irritating sidekick and I was thankful to see he didn't have much in the movie. This is a C+ movie. It is not ground breaking stuff by far, but given the facts in the trivia, that this movie was shot in an old shopping mall on 1 million dollars budget and a short time, it is not terrible. It will not compete with Total Recall or other A list Mars movies, but it is like your first car, rough around the edges, but gets you there. It is worth your time if you can see past a few faults.

With a title like MARS, you instantly think of movies like TOTAL RECALL, RED PLANET or even the slightly abominable MISSION TO MARS. Now those movies at least showed the planet Mars in all its glory. In Jon Hess' MARS we get a story that could take place anywhere. We only get two CGI top-shots of the Mars-based Alpha City in the beginning and the end of the movie, and we also see some actors stumbling around on a pile of red sand. The rest of the dull and clichéd story takes place on card-board interior-sets. It all looks real small and they don't even have enough extra's to populate the sets. The story itself is predictable involving a company-man (Olivier Gruner) arriving on Mars to investigate the death of his brother. But still the plot manages to be structured like any decent police-investigation story. You can immediately spot who the bad guy is and the plot is just an excuse for a lot of kicking and fighting. There's also supposed to be a big successful mining-company on Mars, but all we see is three man drilling outside. The bad guys just can't act and Olivier Gruner is incapable of showing emotion but does kick a few good punches (that's why he was great playing a cyborg in AUTOMATIC and a cybernetic human in NEMESIS). But please don't give him any meaningful lines to say, 'cause you won't be able to stop laughing with his straight face. In the end this movie even loses track of its own purpose. Is it about the drugs? Is it about the ore? Is it about the health of the Marsians? Who cares. But it will have you laughing when the bad boss is killed at the end. So, to many, MARS might be a waste of time, which it probably is. But still, I've seen worse. Mars belongs in that same bad sci-fi vein as PRECIOUS FIND, but at least that one was fun 'cause it didn't take itself seriously.

This has to be one of the worst movies I have seen. I generally like science fiction and was interested in it because it was a Mars based movie. It was hard to completely watch it though. The acting was poor and the editing was horrible. Scenes would cut to other scenes or jump around making it hard to follow the movie. The story line is really pretty weak with transparent characters and very little plot. It is pretty easy to predict what is going to happen by the end of the movie. There are some interesting fight scenes but that is about the only positive aspect of the movie. This is obviously a lower budget made for video movie. But all in all do not waste your time. There are much better science fiction movies out there.

MARS is probably the most boring film you can find starring Oliver Gruner. NEMESIS was an okay movie (despite it being made by Albert Puyn), but this little "action"-movie is very boring.The story is stolen from all other Mars-movies, and is of course about that evil corporation that has a mining enterprise on the planet. Gruner is to find out what happened to his brother, who was murdered two days ago. And that's about as exciting it gets...The bad-guys have VERY disappointing dialogue and the script is poorly written. The main idea is not at all bad. The production could have been so much better with some re-writes. The cast isn't necessary all bad either - especially Lee de Broux (RoboCop) is nice to see, even though he doesn't have much to work with.Gruner himself isn't all that bad either, but the lack of a good script, the bad directing, the VERY bad sets and props and especially the terrible dialogue is making this film a very boring and very bad movie. Yes, it is in the league of Creepozoids and Timewalker.I give this film 1 out of 10.