In Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, the Angry Red Planet has some pretty familiar landscape.

 There's glimpses of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Chris Carter's The X-Files and James Cameron's The Abyss -- not to mention dozens of defunct and current TV series.

 Once again, the assumption is that Earth is really just a Petri dish for some superior alien civilization benign or otherwise.

 In the case of Mission to Mars, such familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt.

 De Palma is a reliable craftsman and, for his Mission, he has assembled a talented crew of actors, writers, designers and special-effects technicians.

 This Mission goes off with nary a hitch.

 There are quiet, thoughtful dialogue moments to balance the longer, highly credible special-effects sequences.

 Mission looks good, sounds good and teases the imagination and the mind a little without offering too much of a challenge to either.

 Mission to Mars is really about two missions.

 The first, led by Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle), is ambushed by a whirling sand dune that is not simply a force of nature, but rather an intelligence with a mission of its own.

 A second mission under the command of Graham's buddies Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise) and Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) is eventually dispatched.

 Not quickly you understand because nothing in this film is done in haste.

 That is the biggest problem with Mission to Mars.

 It moves with a much too deliberate and restrained pace.

 The rescue mission is fraught with problems but little suspense or tension.

 Watching the astronauts struggling for their lives is like viewing a ballet.

 It's undeniably engrossing -- but hardly as nerve-wracking as it should be.

 The actors are not to blame.

 Sinise gives his all as a man trying to rediscover a reason for living. Because his McConnell is so introspective, he gives the film a mind.

 Robbins and Connie Nielsen, as his astronaut wife, give it a heart.

 Their playful banter and warm affection eventually gives way to the film's most heartfelt moment.

 As the youngest and most disbelieving member of the crew, Jerry O'Connell provides the comic relief. It's dry and unforced.

 To De Palma's credit, Mission to Mars does not fall prey to the same problem that plagued Contact, The Abyss and Sphere.

 In those movies, the end of the journey was shrouded in mystery and ambiguity.

 Not so on Mars.

 What the astronauts discover when they eventually enter the giant stone face is definitive and spelled out in terms that should escape no one.

 The hypothesis is undoubtedly going to anger creationists, but it will probably intrigue the science fiction buffs at whom this film is aimed.

 This is not a movie crafted for the adventure and action crowd, but for generations raised on The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and The X-Files.

 Brian De Palma's Mission is a success.

 It's just not a particularly mind blowing or harrowing voyage.

(This film is rated PG)

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