Based upon the novel by Andy Weir
Screenplay Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
**** (four stars)
RATED PG 13
RUNNING TIME: 2hrs 36min
I have to admit to you that in recent years, I have truly grown soft when it comes to my perceptions of Ryan Gosling.
Truth be told, I have not always felt this way. In fact, there was a significant period where I was quite fascinated with this then new, younger actor who had a tenacity for pulling off a collection of strong, charismatic, deeply interesting and engaging performances, even in films I perhaps did not care for.
As a cocaine addicted middle school teacher in Ryan Fleck's "Half Nelson" (2006), Gosling delivered a performance of insightful nuanced depth to the point where I knew he was one to watch. While Craig Gillespie's "Lars and the Real Girl" (2007) ultimately suffered from that indie film self-conscious/self-congratulatory quirkiness for me, Gosling's portrayal of a man arrested within mental illness resulting in his wholly unorthodox relationship, such as it is, with a blow up doll, was again a performance that impressed greatly due to its tenderness and honesty.
That being said, and I do realize that I exist within a bit of a minority, Ryan Gosling over the years has felt to exist within a certain performance stasis. Not that he has ever given what could be considered to being a "bad performance," but one where they are all beginning to feel as if they were variations of the same one or two themes: the taciturn, emotionally absent male--Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" (2011), Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049" (2017), Damien Chazelle's "First Man" (2018)--or the B.M.O.C./"Prom King"--Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's "Crazy, Stupid, Love" (2011), Damien Chazelle's "La La Land" (2016), every sketch he giggles his way through on his visits to "Saturday Night Live." Again, not a bad performance in the bunch whatsoever but a little of each goes a very long way and I was feeling a bit of coasting at work and my interest in his future projects waned.
With Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's exuberant "Project Hail Mary," Ryan Gosling not only brings all that we know to be his considerable gifts to the table, he considerably ups his game, crafting a performance that is honestly wonderful to regard. And to that end, the film as a whole is enormously entertaining and powerfully affecting in its creativity, filmmaking, storytelling and resonant emotion already making it for being one of the best films of 2026.
As the film opens, we are introduced to Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), as he awakens from an induced coma as the sole survivor upon an interstellar spacecraft light years away from Earth. As he slowly recovers from amnesia, we learn that life on Earth is in peril as the sun is dying. Scientists have discovered an infrared line, known as the "Petrova Line," stretching from the sun to Venus, which contains a microorganism called "astrophage" escalating on the sun's surface causing it to dim, while also infecting other stars n our solar system, leading to an apocalyptic event for Earth in potentially 30 years time.
Grace soon remembers his life prior to space travel as a middle school Science teacher and former molecular biologist disgraced for a controversial paper once published regarding his beliefs about the possibility of the existence of alien life forms, eventually recruited by Government agent Eva Stratt (a quietly formidable Sandra Huller) to study astrophage alongside international Scientists.
Further experimentations and discoveries by Grace afford the team the opportunity to enact "Project Hail Mary," in which a three person crew will fly to Tau Ceti, the only uninfected nearby star, to investigate and send information back to Earth via probes while also existing as a suicide mission for the astronauts involved as there will not be enough fuel for a return trip.
Back in space, as Grace's memories re-emerge while still remaining confused as to how or why he is even on the spacecraft in the first place as he views himself being not remotely "heroic," he encounters another space vessel which amazingly contains a sole alien life form, a five legged rock formed creature Grace soon dubs "Rocky" (beautifully performed and voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz).
It turns out that Rocky is upon the exact same space mission to save his own planet and the duo joins forces to hopefully successfully rescue their respective home worlds together.
To echo Rocky's own exclamations as heard in the film, all I could utter to myself over and again throughout the entirety of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's "Project Hail Mary" was indeed, "Amaze! Amaze!! Amaze!!!" as what we have is unquestionably one amazing cinematic experience.
On a purely aesthetic level, the film is an audio/visual feast executed in A+ level excellence. Lord and Miller, working in full collaboration with their team which incudes Editor Joel Negron, Cinematographer Greig Fraser and Composer Daniel Pemberton, delivered one of the first film going experiences in quiet some time that truly made my eyes and spirit bedazzled due to the purposefully more tactile execution of this material.
I have proclaimed for many years upon this site that with the advent and over reliance upon CGI technology, we have entered the age where special effects simply are not special anymore due to their prevalence and lack of understanding that there is an artistry to be had and when the technology is utilized as a shortcut and not as a tool of specificity, the overall quality suffers. With "Project Hail Mary," Lord and Miller unveiled a film that is often visually mesmerizing in its brand of psychedelia, sometimes reminiscent of the stargate sequence in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968).
I absolutely loved the usage of colors, light and shadow. The slight grain of the film stock. The lack of green and blue screens and the detail within physical sets and locations. Undoubtedly the puppeteering of Rocky! All of these elements and more congealed richly to convey the conceptual and emotional themes of time and space, in addition to distance, isolation, mortality, unity, communion and friendship. Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" is a film made by human hands for human beings instead of something impersonal generated by a computer. Profoundly appropriate for a film that is overflowing with its moral sense of empathy and plea for humanity.
Beyond the technical professionalism, creativity and invention, Lord and Miller's most miraculous achievement is capturing the film's tonality which dance's supremely upon a knife's edge of pathos
and comedy, never for an instant losing sight of the other. It is incredible to me that film that is envisioning the extinction of humanity itself could be so light upon its cinematic feet while ensuring the existential stakes are always felt and not once abandoned for laughs. To that end, the comedy throughout is honest and not once overbearing. This is a film that exists within a specific symmetry as it is conscious of the fact that we are living in increasingly inhumane times and Lord and Miller purposefully have created a work that is earnest, sincere and open hearted in its humanity regarding the symbiotic nature of what existence actually is, can be and should be.
In its own way, I felt Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" to work in a similar cinematic stratosphere as Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" (2025) and Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" (2025) as it is a multilayered experience that straddles the intimate and the epic while firmly meeting the moment in our current space in the 21st century as again, Also we are co-existing in a precarious state due to a rapidly diminishing spiritual core.
While "Project Hail Mary" is not being explicitly political, I do believe that all art is political to varying degrees. For instance, Lord and Miller have created a science fiction film based in ideas, certainly and precisely like Ridley Scott's "The Martian" (2015)--itself based upon Andy Weir's novel and with a Screenplay written by Drew Goddard--as well as existing in the same cinematic spaces as the aforementioned Kubrick landmark plus Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" (1977), Robert Zemeckis's "Contact" (1997), Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" (2014), Alex Garland's "Annihilation" (2016), and Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" (2016). These are all films that are not about popcorn fueled destruction but ones that adhere to the undisputable reality that Science and Math are real and essential to understanding how existence functions. There is no way around that fact no matter what detractors may wish to exclaim and how distressing it is that reality itself has become debatable. But...here we are...
Also like "The Martian," this is a film entirely about process and problem solving as Grace, either solitary or working in conjunction with Earth Scientists and/or the alien Rocky, are faced with one conundrum after another. Not in a cliffhanger fashion, although there are many white knuckle situations and sequences to behold, but in a more practical sense of discovering all of the mini-problems that exist within the grand problem and again, the symmetry that exists between them.
Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary" is also a film about communication, making me feel this film to work in connectivity with Carroll Ballard's "The Black Stallion" (1979), Steven Spielberg's "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), James Cameron's "The Abyss" (1989), Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders' "How To Train Your Dragon" (2010) and the aforementioned "Arrival." This film is asking of us to truly think about our relationships, with those who begin as strangers and then grow emotionally close, to those who differ from ourselves, to especially our relationships with animals, nature and the environment that surrounds us. How do we begin to understand someone or something that is different than ourselves? How do we begin to share language? How do we begin to understand even when we cannot understand? And how does that communion between ourselves and others reflect or enhance the communion we have within ourselves?
The late, great Roger Ebert expressed the following words within Steve James' beautifully elegiac documentary film about Ebert entitled "Life Itself" (2014):
"We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It helps you understand a little bit more about hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."
I feel that the greatest success with Lord and Miller's "Project Hail Mary," is that this is a film that works as a distillation of Ebert's sentiments. Via the film's non-linear structure, Lord and Miller open with the quandary of one man, which extends itself to one planet, which further extends itself to an alien creature and widens the canvas further to include the alien's home planet and further than that, all of the species that exists in between. The drama contained within the film grows from singular to an interconnected universality. This is what makes the friendship between Grace and Rocky so palpable in its heart pounding emotion. This is how the film's themes of bravery, sacrifice, grace, compassion, and the realization that every single living thing contains a purpose and importance carries such weight. For without even one, the universe unravels. To have empathy for one you must have empathy for all because we are all in this together.
And for everything about and within the film that succeeds due to the concept of togetherness, I have to turn my attention at this time to the superb performance by Ryan Gosling who does indeed carry the film on his shoulders, making for an achievement that more than deserves whatever recognition he is bound to receive during awards season.
Like Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis' "Cast Away" (2000) and Sandra Bullock in Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" (2013), for instance, large swaths of "Project Hail Mary" finds Gosling either all alone or acting without another human being, so to speak, and he makes the considerable task of holding the screen by himself seemingly effortless.
Beyond that feat, it is more than fitting that Gosling's character's name is "Grace," as this is a performance that exudes the quality housed inside of the name. Ryan Gosling gives us considerable layers to the odyssey of Ryland Grace, an ordinary man living through an extraordinary time and experience, facing down mortality with the innate and honest fear that whatever it is that might make one person willing to take up an impenetrable challenge, he feels (or even knows) himself to not be that person. For what is courage? Strength? Selflessness? What does it mean to believe in oneself when you do not? What does it mean when others see in you qualities and characteristics you do not see within yourself? How do you keep placing one foot in front of the other when you do not truly know the destination or the consequences of your actions or inactions?
This is the quandary of life as it is lived. This is the quandary of what it means to be human. Ryan Gosling embodies this journey masterfully with such patience, charm, frailty, fragility, humor, tragedy and a widely open heartedness that always invites us to lean even closer to his magnetic screen presence. Whatever issues I had towards him previously, as I described at the outset of this review, were completely washed away with his performance in this wondrous film.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's "Project Hail Mary" could not have arrived at a more crucial time and I am feeling that the overwhelmingly positive response to the film showcases a societal need to be presented with something hopeful as the dark clouds feel as if they will never part for sunshine again. It is a film that reaching out for us just as we are reaching back towards it and the embrace felt in the union in nothing less than healing.
While watching the film, I often thought about this song lyric from Todd Rundgren in his song "Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel" (1973). In that, he sings, "Someone said the world's gonna end and I think it's true. I thought there was some love in the world but I guess I'm wrong." To that end, I thought of another Rundgren lyric, this time from his song "Fair Warning" (1975) when he sang, "I can't let the world die because no one would try."
I really do not know if a movie can change the world but if everyone who sees and enjoys "Project Hail Mary" could internalize the messages contained and release them outwards as our own Hail Mary pass from one to another, maybe we could save ourselves.
What would Ryland Grace do?
