Movie Review: Ad Astra - How far would you go to resolve, or at least confront, your daddy issues?
in which it will become crystal clear whether or not this is the type of movie for you, and I am sorry to report that it will require you investing about 100 minutes to get there. There is a man who has traveled an unfathomable distance, a journey that has cost years and billions of dollars and actual human life, ostensibly to save the world. But once he has reached his destination, after all that toil and strife, the actual purpose of his voyage turns out to be perfunctory—besides the point.
3. If I’ve made this sound like an exciting space thriller yarn, know that director James Gray is in a much more meditative state here: This is more about the mystery of the soul of man than it is about the mystery of the universe, or even about some big spaceship fights. The universe is the backdrop to the story of a man and his thrwarted issues with his father, and his inability to connect with anyone else in the world because of it.
is about the depths a man can find within himself, and how far down he can climb in them and hide. Pitt wouldn’t seem like the ideal actor for a part like that—charisma drips off him so effortlessly that it leaves a trail behind him wherever he goes—but he’s impressive at playing a man who doesn’t understand himself but suspect the answer to the riddle that has vexed him his whole life must be in this man who gave him life but whom he never really knew.
4. Gray provides some thrills on the journey of father to find son, and they are extremely well-crafted, particularly a battle with space pirates on the moon that takes place in a world without both gravity and sound. But to say that this movie has “space pirates on the moon” is accurate but still misleading; Gray gives us these moments to move the story along and make sure we get our adequate Big Outer Space Movie scenes, but it’s obvious his heart isn’t in it.
5. It still has its moments: Gray is too skilled a filmmaker to leave us wandering and astray. And in Pitt, he has a solid emotional center that the audience will still follow anywhere, even if it’s to the ends of the solar system just to confront his daddy issues. What happens when we get to the inevitable conclusionaffecting, and it’s a particularly strong performance from Jones, who conveys both madness and vulnerability in his short screen time.
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