For a film that makes a definitive claim to a title – Mars – Mars is an underwhelming disappointment. When a film stakes out such a definitive topic – the promise being that Mars is offering the one authoritative word on its title subject – it had better have something important to say on the topic. (You can almost bet that the big-budget and much more thematically substantial spate of Mars films that came out in 2000, Mission to Mars (2000) and Red Planet (2000), were spitting tacks that Mahagonny had beaten them to the title and they were left with something lesser). Alas, Mars has nothing interesting to say about its location whatsoever. The venue is of almost no importance to the story – it could be set on The Moon, a Western mining town, or an island in the South Pacific for all the difference that it makes. Furthermore, we rarely see much of Mars itself – one of two brief model shots at the start and a minor surface excursion, which is conducted with little panorama, while the rest of the film appears to have been shot in a series of basement corridors and cut-price sets. It is no more than a warmed-over action movie.

The plot substantially rips off Outland (1981) – the theme of a lone lawman on a Solar System mining outpost; a company run by a double-dealing executive who is exploiting workers with dangerous drugs; and most noticeably in the character of a crustily individualistic woman doctor who ends up grudgingly helping the hero out. Jon Hess’s action scenes only occasionally come to life, but mostly look cheap. Belgian kickboxer-turned-actor Olivier Gruner, who has appeared in a number of Mahagonny’s films, plays tight-lipped and mean, which at least serves to keep his wooden acting to a minimum. Harry Belafonte’s daughter Shari plays the medic with a white-blonde hair dye job, and delivers a harsh performance that gives one the impression that she was not very happy at all during filming.