Film Review - Ad Astra (2019)

Ad Astra is directed by James Gray who made the Lost City of Z a couple of years ago and stars Brad Pitt as Roy McBride, an astronaut in the near future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic electrical surges that may have been caused by a project his father (Tommy Lee Jones) is working on and now the son must search for the father to find out what’s going on and if the surges can be stopped.

Ad Astra is a real mixed bag of a film with some big positives first of those is the sheer spectacle of the film itself, the production design, visual effects and cinematography are all first rate and really make this movie worth watching on a large cinema screen and there were numerous times where I sat there thinking “Wow this is pretty” and the 4K release of this movie will be very nice.

Secondly Mr Pitt is superb here and I would love to see him get a Best Actor nomination for his work here, he carries this movie effortlessly and makes it look easy when compared to most actors and it has been easy to forget how good of an actor he can really be as he’s mainly been remembered for his handsome leading man routine which is a disservice to his broader talents, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland I enjoyed seeing in this movie while sadly Ms Liv Tyler and Ms Ruth Negga got really very little to do save for a few scenes here and there.

Sadly however this movie’s script is its biggest weakness, the film tries to balance the high stakes of the electrical surges and possible corporate secrets with the personal search of a son for his father in space and it never feels like the two sides really come together in a way that adds to both stories and makes them feel complementary to each other and at one point there’s monkeys floating in Space and all I could think was the Saiyans from Dragon Ball which were ape like in their appearance and turned into giant ones at the sight of a full moon and I had some other thoughts but that would be telling as it ties into the climax.

And so that was Ad Astra and as a spectacle it looks great and warrants a big screen watch but as a script I wasn’t as fond of it, 2 and a half out of 5.