Could have been great if the plot wasn’t overstuffed with dysfunctional father-son issues. Moderately recommended.

This movie reminded me a lot of Interstellar. Awesome special effects, terrific score, moving performances, but bogged down due to family issues. With Ad Astra, Brad Pitt plays an astronaut who needs to make contact with, then seek out his father. The father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, was last heard of on a ship docked outside Neptune. That ship was equipped with an anti-mater telescope (?) that can search for life in the universe. For some reason, the father has been pointing that ray gun at the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, disrupting electrical devices and causing general havoc. Why he’s been doing that, is never explained.

Instead. we have Brad Pitt’s character traveling to the Moon, then Mars, to send his dad messages. His dad does send a response, to the last message, but we never learn what it is. This causes Pitt to sneak (!) onboard a rocket ship armed with a nuclear device that will wipe out the anti-mater telescope thing and the man pointing it around indiscriminately.

Pitt’s performance is very understated, to the point where you would think he had his charisma removed while filming. He does get several chances in the movie to show his moxie. One is when the commander of a ship bound for Mars freezes, and Pitt’s character gets the ship to land. Then, when he gets on board the craft heading out for Neptune, he holds off fellow astronauts who have been ordered to subdue him. In one of the biggest mistakes ever, the captain of that craft (the same one who froze earlier) fires a weapon inside the ship. This, I think, causes the ship to suck out all of the oxygen in order to prevent a fire. At least, that’s what I think happened.

Tommy Lee Jones’ character is surprisingly one-note. There is a minor attempt to portray him in shades of gray, but that is abandoned for a more “he’s really evil” explanation. In spite of the pedestrian plot and some eye-rolling beats within it, I enjoyed the movie’s scope and vision. Seeing a colony on the Moon, with Subway no less, was pretty cool. Also, seeing Pitt’s character take a trip to Mars, in what was less than a week I think, was also cool. There were moments where the movie reminded me of 2001 in its futurism. This movie is one where you really should see it on a big screen, with an excellent sound system. One last thing: I never found out why the movie was named “Ad Astra”. (Uncle Google tells me that it’s Latin for “To the stars”.)