A cinematic cross between Kubrick’s “2001 A Space Odyssey” and Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now!”, “Ad Astra” is director James Gray’s take on “Daddy Knows Best” on LSD. Brad Pitt (whose at his most Robert Redford) plays the son, Roy, and it’s his timeline we see throughout. Roy was ostensibly sent to find his dad who never returned from a previous exploration.
Apparently, his dad’s experiments are causing havoc back on Earth, so he and his experiment need to be stopped. We see other characters that play both immediate and older roles in Roy’s life played over his narrated mumbling confession. Roy narrowly escapes death as he travels to the Moon, Mars, and then Uranus and eventually finds his dad, played by Tommy Lee Jones, hiding out, alone and recalcitrant in his craft. Roy tries to take him home, but dad chooses the big sleep, just before a reconciliation of sorts. Roy destroys his dad’s work before heading for home. The point of this movie seems to be about the importance of family as we see him reunited with his wife at the very end.
I wish the movie was less about “big ideas” and more about the journey, which would have been more interesting.
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