‘Mars Express’ Review – A Serviceable Thriller Set On Another World

Mars Express’ main, and unspoken, draw is in its one-of-a-kind art style. At the base of the look, movements are unusually fluid and stripped down; the latter term describes the whole look, though that isn’t a bad thing. Oftentimes in media, advanced technology and robotics are overcomplicated to an incomprehensible extreme. Here, the simplified designs and overall aesthetic are a nice change of pace. Mars Express handles this look well, and suits it properly to the subject matter; not inexpensive, but appropriately to the point.

With a runtime that comes in just under 90 minutes, the film gets to the point quickly on that front, too. Set on Mars in the year 2200, it follows a private detective and her android partner as they track down a notorious hacker in the planet’s capital city. It’s not quite as cool or eclectic as it sounds, though; the narrative is far more grounded than you’d likely expect.

Perhaps that should be chalked up to improper expectations, but it’s hard not to imagine fluorescent thrills lit by blistering neon lights in a detective-driven film set on a different world. There’s a lot of high-flying potential in an idea like that, but the film aims for a more realistic angle; Mars, despite obviously appearing different, doesn’t feel all that alien.

There are swimming pools, horribly boring hotels, and other plain old things like green street signs and palm trees. That may sound a bit particular, but when you’re assembling a new societal ecosystem from the conceptual ground up, it almost seems obvious that you’d want to deviate from what audiences know to be normal as much as you possibly can. Mars Express manages this to some extent, but it still seems all too familiar to be taking place on a planet we’ve yet to even set foot on in reality. The ceiling is legitimately nonexistent, yet the feature insists on setting it within arm’s reach.

The film’s adult tone does it a lot of favors, though, and ends up being one of the biggest positives this one offers up. The first scene in the film sees two robots (taking the form of a human and her pet cat) get blown to bits by a weapon-wielding intruder, losing fragments of their artificial skin and spewing blue blood every which way in the wake of the attack. There are people, long passed away, with spiders crawling over their eyes and eerily human robots severed in half from the torso up, with their cords and inner-working electronics acting as their estranged organs.

It’s refreshing to see an animated work take on a tone often ignored in the genre; mature animation exists but has been consistently dominant on the televised end of things. Mars Express is an animated movie that is dark, dirty, and, even if it isn’t NC-17 or anything, not suitable for all audiences. Regardless of how good this is, that’s something we should support, and push for more of.

The film itself is just fine. As the story unravels, there are a few neat reveals and extended sequences of discovery that steepen the detective elements and strengthen the film’s overall draw for those allured by the synopsis. Especially considering how short it is, this isn’t a bad use of your time, by any means. It isn’t every day that we get a detective thriller set on another planet. You may forget about it soon after the credits roll, and it’ll likely do little in the way of compelling more general audiences, but Mars Express is a coherent vision nonetheless and should serve as fine entertainment for those interested in the surface-level display.

Mars Express will debut in select theaters on May 3, 2024, courtesy of GKIDS. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQT4Sk4e8Q]