The Martian: Matt Damon dazzles as astronaut stranded on Mars

REVIEW: THE Martian is one of the year’s biggest crowd-pleasers, but whatever you do, don’t miss the beginning.

The Martian (M)

Director: Ridley Scott (Alien)

Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Pena.

Rating: 4/5

Houston, he has a problem

Science fiction on the big screen rarely gets as instantly compelling, yet casually crowdpleasing, as it does in The Martian.

A stirring tale of improvised survival on a desolate planet is guaranteed not only to raise the calmest pulses, but also place smiles on dials.

Based on the wildly popular 2011 book by American author Andy Weir, the movie’s conceptual co-ordinates triangulate somewhere close to Gravity meets Cast Away via Apollo 13.

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Cutting to the chase ... it’s Gravity meets Cast Away.

Just don’t be running late here whatever you do, because The Martian is not playing any scene-setting waiting games in its opening minutes.

Having only just arrived on Mars, a six-person NASA research team must beat a hasty retreat back to Earth.

A monster squall is about to sweep the red planet. Everyone must quite literally down tools and make a run for it back to the transport capsule.

Glass half-full ... Matt Damon as stranded Mars astronaut Mark Watney.

By the time Captain Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain) gives the all-clear for an emergency exit launch, the head count is down to five.

The lowest-ranking member of the crew, botanist Mark Whitney (Matt Damon), was struck by flying debris, and is assumed to have died instantly.

No prizes for guessing Mark did not perish. However, let’s skip forward a bit to the make-or-break scenario which will carry The Martian to greater heights.

First, the good news. Mark has the food-and-shelter thing covered. The crew’s base station is still operational. With less mouths to feed, there is almost a year’s worth of supplies to keep Mark nourished.

The bad news? A year’s worth of meals isn’t of much long-term use to Mark’s plight, considering no spacecraft is scheduled to reach Mars for at least another four years.

As for Mark raising an alarm that might alert his team to double-back and rescue him, forget about it. All communications systems are down.

In spite of having done the maths for the doomed equation before him, Mark decides to skew the figures in his favour.

Earth to Mars ... Kristen Wiig in The Martian.

As a glass-half-full kind of guy, our hero isn’t going to sit around and wait for a sealed fate to play itself out.

In his own words, any chance Mark stands of beating the odds will mean “I’m going to have to science the sh-- out of this.”

Which is exactly what he quickly sets out to do, starting off with an ingenious (and rather gross) method of growing his own produce, and then moving on from there.

What follows is an incredibly involving (and surprisingly plausible) yarn about finding resilience, resourcefulness and humour in places and situations where none of these things should be remotely possible.

Flight crew ... Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Sebastian Stan, Kate Mara and Aksel Hennie.

Speaking of remotely, The Martian remains just as exciting and entertaining when it moves its storytelling focus off the surface of Mars.

Continual crosses to NASA HQ in Houston — where a brains trust led by Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor are trying to piece together what has happened up there — move with an upbeat urgency that is disarmingly enjoyable.

This lightness of touch in a heavy-density situation is a weapon wielded most effectively by director Ridley Scott, a filmmaker not normally renowned for such an approach (as evidenced by his polarising previous mission into space cinema, 2012’s Prometheus).

Originally published as The Martian: Matt Damon dazzles as astronaut stranded on Mars