Ad Astra is a boy’s own story writ galactically large. Brad Pitt plays an astronaut, Roy McBride, whose hero father disappeared 30 years ago on a pioneering mission to find alien life, leaving him with unresolved daddy issues.
Now it seems dad (Tommy Lee Jones, looking ancient) may still be alive, in the region of Neptune, and somehow connected to a threat to the world. So Roy sets off to find him, taking a nuclear device to deal with pater if he turns out to have gone rogue.
The movie is helpfully studded with a series of what director James Gray calls “whammos” — action set-pieces — but excitement is vitiated by a direly sententious Terrence Malick-style commentary from Roy (“I don’t know if I hope to find him or finally be free of him”).
Gravity, Interstellar or even First Man this is not, despite the contributions of cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and composer Max Richter. Brad Pitt holds it together heroically, playing dumb. Therapy might have helped.
