(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) is a science fiction movie starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride whose father Clifford McBride (played by a decrepit looking Tommy Lee Jones) is inexplicably firing anti-matter particles back at Earth from the orbit of the planet Neptune. The anti-matter will eventually destroy Earth so Roy is supposed to go to the Moon to catch a ride to Mars to broadcast a message to his father asking him not to destroy Earth, or something. The why and how of all this is very odd. Clifford has been MIA for twenty years on a mission called Lima that was somehow supposed to be looking for extraterrestrial intelligence (from somewhere near Neptune!).
Eventually we learn that Clifford murdered his crew long ago because they figured out, he was crazy. When Roy gives his message on Mars Clifford doesn’t agree to cease and desist so the military outfits a mission to nuke Project Lima to erase the threat. Somehow (but not believably) Roy stows aboard the rocket (after it blasts off) and without really trying he kills the whole crew that were trying to kill him. Now he flies to Neptune and confronts his father who is completely nuts. He sets the nuke and thinks he’s convinced Clifford to return to Earth with him. But when push literally comes to shove, Clifford unshackles himself from Roy and heads off into empty, empty space.
Finally, Roy uses a hatch panel to protect himself while he takes a shortcut through the rings of Neptune and then somehow the nuclear blast that destroyed Project Lima was able to provide most of the kinetic energy to return him to Earth before Roy dies of old age. And despite all the astronauts he killed getting out there the military decides to forgive and forget and so Roy finishes off by reciting some kind of humanistic spiritual affirmation statement of some kind or other and then gets back together with his ex-wife Liv Tyler.
Now maybe that sounds quite odd for a science fiction story. And it is. This is a somewhat confusing rigamarole. So let me give my thoughts on it. The visual effects are quite good. Some scenes in low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and aboard spacecraft are a lot of fun to watch. But there are (I kid you not) space monkeys! Which I kinda/hafta frown upon. So, two points off. Brad Pitt’s character starts out as an apparently emotionless robot who always saves the world from disaster without getting his pulse above eighty. By the end he’s crying about his crazy father being crazy. Tommy Lee Jones’ character is crazy so there’s not much there. Donald Sutherland has a small part and he’s always crazy. So, this movie doesn’t make a lot of sense. For instance, how is Tommy Lee Jones investigating other life in the universe from Neptune. Neptune is too incredibly cold for anything to live there. And it’s not like it’s any closer to the stars than Earth. Alright, I’ll stop making fun of the movie. It’s a crazy movie, but like “2001: A Space Odyssey” it’s a visually enjoyable movie if you don’t care too much about the plot. I recommend it for hard-core sci-fi film lovers who can live with space monkeys.