Red Faction: Origins

After 200 years of tyranny in Mars, the EDF (Earth Defense Force) is defeated by the alliance Red Faction formed by the Colonies with the Marauders led by Alec Mason (Robert Patrick). However the alliance is broken when Alec's wife Sam (Sarah Brown) and his daughter Lyra are murdered by the Marauders. However his ten-year-old son Jake claims that white soldiers have killed his mother.

In the present days, Jake Mason (Brian J. Smith) is a soldier from the Red Faction and Alec is a drunken troublemaker. Jake is assigned to retrieve the technology of the EDF Battleship Hydra will crash on a neutral zone with Tess (Danielle Nicolet). However he finds that white soldiers have arrived first and they get the Hydra. Jake attacks one of the soldiers and finds that she is his sister Lyra (Tamzin Merchant). When he returns to the Colony, nobody believes in his words.

Jake decides to find Lyra and deserts the Red Faction. He crosses the Marauder territory to reach Asimov, where he believes he may find a clue of the location of his sister. Along his journey, he teams-up with Tess and the Marauders Leo (Devon Graye) and Corvallis (Gordon Kennedy). Soon they discover that the white soldiers belong to the EDF and their leader plans a war between the Red Faction and the Marauders led by the Matriarch Omaya (Kate Vernon).

"Red Faction: Origins" is a surprisingly good Sy-Fy movie, with a solid story and great cast. The status quo of the Martian society divided in Red Faction and Marauders is presented too soon and rushed and fortunately I saw this movie on DVD and I repeated the explanation to understand how these people and EDF are entwined. I believe that some of the bad reviews in IMDb belong to viewers that have not understood the story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Facção Vermelha: Origens" ("Red Faction: Origins")

While they got the set pieces correct and the outfits as well as props where lovingly detailed, the plot line seems to completely deviate from what is already established in the Red Faction series. Anyone who's played the games and is a fan of the series will soon be What The at this movie. Characters have been seriously changed, factions have been seriously altered, and some of the canon established history has been completely rewritten in a very Uwe Boll fashion.

Bring your Suspenders of Disbelief for this one, and make sure they're titanium laced to withstand the strain. If you're a fan, don't watch it, you'll just go into nerd-rage territory.

For a movie called Red Faction: Origins, I'd expect this to be Parker's story, not Post Alex Mason. How is getting very close to the FOURTH GAME in the series an "origins" story?

Not having played any of the Red Faction games, I am not really up to speed about the various factions, the history or the lore of this particular setting. However, watching the movie without this predetermined knowledge, the movie turned out to be a good enough Sci-Fi movie.

The effects in the movie were adequate. This is a SyFy Channel original movie, after all. The effects did what they were supposed to do, and that was it. Don't expect dazzling multi-million dollar CGI effects here. But still, it worked in the way it was supposed to. However, the costumes and uniforms were really a nice touch, I liked those. And the feeling there was to Mars was alright, although it could have been a bit more detailed and have more atmosphere added to make the audience believe that the movie actually did take place on the red planet.

Storywise, then "Red Faction: Origins" was alright as well, it had a good story that had a continual flow to it, and the storyline was easy to follow and had a good amount of key characters to it without becoming a messy result.

The actors and actresses in the movie were also doing good jobs with their given roles and characters.

All in all, then "Red Faction: Origins" is a good and entertaining movie if you like the Sci-Fi genre. Sure, it is not "Star Wars" or "Star Trek", but in its own right, it does make for a good addition to the Sci-Fi genre.

"Red Faction: Origins" get a 5 out of 10 rating from me. Just because a movie is based on a computer game doesn't necessarily make it a bad experience.

I wanted to like this film but it just would not let me. I find it excessively annoying that other reviewers compared it to games that I have never played or ever will. I wanted the movie to stand on its own merits. Battling the forces of nature on Mars is intriguing but battling the same old bad guys is not. The only recognizable actor was an aged and bloated Robert Patrick (Terminator 2). The rest were a bunch of strangers. This is a futuristic tale about a young brother and sister separated during a raid but the grown up brother finally finds grown up sister in the clutches of a maniac (with the requisite black eye patch). Brother gets sister back and patches up the conflict between the factions. Snore!

First, I had never heard of the Red Factions game before reviewing this movie. I'm looking at it as a stand alone SciFi movie from SyFy Channel. I'm a sucker for Grade B Science Fiction movie so it looked worth trying.

For SyFy Channel, it wasn't that bad. There was no ridiculous monster eating damsels in distress. The special effects were adequate, but with CGI computer horsepower these days it doesn't take much. The sets and much of the production team were Bulgarian, but this is SyFy channel and you expect the best in Bulgarian film making. The actors were OK, but that's rarely the problem with these movies. What's usually the problem with SyFy Channel movies is the script, and that was kind of OK. Not an immortal classic but you didn't cringe.

I give it a fair six. It's worth seeing on a slow afternoon with a pizza.