![]() "Capricorn One" toys with this, giving us an opening sequence in which the President is revealed to be too busy to attend the launch of the first rocket to another planet the weaselly Vice President (James Karen) is sent in his stead, and he spends all his time ogling the female form. Mere years after landing on the moon, the public was bored with space exploration itself. More importantly, however, is how the filmmaker addresses a different issue: by the mid-1970s, America hadn't just grown cynical, it had grown apathetic. The idea of NASA having a team of assassins on standby is quite a stretch, but Hyams keeps the threats vague enough to build the right sense of dread and paranoia without openly collapsing into ridiculousness. Oh, and if they don't, their families will be killed. ![]() So for the sake of the nation, Kelloway wants his astronauts to play along in faking the whole dang thing. By golly, a Mars landing will do the trick. But such a setback would only worsen national morale, already at a dismal low, and the American people need something proud and courageous to lift up their spirits. There, NASA bigwig James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) explains that they've had to scrub the mission due to faulty equipment. Simpson) are set to be the first men on Mars, until, minutes away from lift-off, they're scrambled out of the capsule and taken into hiding. While writer/director Hyams originally conceived the idea for the story years earlier, it wouldn't be until Watergate that his notions would really gel after all, with our leaders lying to us about everything else, why wouldn't they add the space race to the list?Īstronauts Brubaker (James Brolin), Willis (Sam Waterston), and Walker (O.J. The movie is a clever play on the beliefs of those moon landing conspiracy nutters - you know, the folks who, despite trivial things like "facts" and "evidence," swear the Apollo mission was all a big put-on. Here's a film that wants not only to reflect the cynicism of its time, but also study it, openly wondering if the mood of the nation could truly be salvaged by heroic deeds, or would we only view those deeds with somber, questioning eyes, too? Remembered today mainly as a bitter, post-Watergate conspiracy thriller, Peter Hyam's "Capricorn One" embraces its genre while simultaneously digging a bit deeper.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |