Review of Ad Astra

This film has heart, but no spine. The story is not well formed and incomplete, filled with expectations of no avail. Sad Brad Pitt is a space astronaut, a lone crusader who suffers loneliness and bad marriage ending in a separation from being emotionally unavailable. The character is lost in a quiet misery. Despite being in his 50s, Brad's character cannot find peace of mind and is an absent lover because his father was a famous astronaut who left them to space and some years later disappeared and presumed dead. The film revolves around his obsession with his father and as he learns he might be alive, his obsession with finding him to have some sort of closure. His quest evolves in shallow ways as the film unfolds and the premise of finding mysteries in space only lead to short teasers (man-eating monkeys in space with no explanation as for where they came from and what this was about, seems like a thriller with no purpose), and eventually he finds his father which is a bitter asshole who never loved him at all. This revelation apparently sets Brad free and his wife/ex wife comes back to him as he is now not so sad. Liv Tyler appears in the film for a total of perhaps five minutes, as her part is merely for the purpose of being a background story to emphasize his loneliness. In the end, the film leaves us with unfulfilled promises and an unsettling feeling of something we never quite had. Perhaps, this was the whole point.