Sometimes it helps if you don't know too much about a movie before actually seeing it so what follows isn't so much a 'spoiler alert' as just a bit of a giveaway. All I knew about "Ad Astra" before seeing it was that it was about an astronaut, (Brad Pitt), travelling to the far reaches of the universe in search of his father; so far so pretentious. Having been massively disappointed by Claire Denis' highly praised and highflautin "High Life", I was in no mood for philosophical soul-searching in the deepest recesses of space so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that "Ad Astra" is really "Apocalypse Now" in Outer Space with Brad Pitt as the Willard character and Tommy Lee Jones as his Kurtz; the main difference being the man he's sent to stop 'with extreme prejudice' is his father.
"Ad Astra" is a smart, intelligent and actually very exciting Space Opera and it's as good as they come. It wastes no time in getting down to business, treats its space travel with a certain degree of realism, never short-changes on the action and actually succeeds in delivering the big father/son pay-off without seeming either pretentious or mawkish. If it has a fault it's that it's all over too quickly and with less drama than we might have hoped for.
Pitt, who is hardly ever off the screen, is superb. This could be a career-best role for him and Tommy Lee Jones is suitably world-weary, or space-weary, as his father. Unfortunately, no-one else is given very much to do; the likes of Donald Sutherland and Ruth Negga come and go without adding very much to the proceedings. The director is James Gray and this should prove to be his big breakthrough film. Well worth seeing.
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