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Capricorn one reviews3/7/2023 The three astronauts escape and separate, hoping that one of them will live to expose the sensational fraud. After news reaches the captive astronauts that their rocket disintegrated upon re-entry and the world believes them dead, they know their very existence poses a threat to national security. Caulfield and a colleague search for the truth. Intrigued by the possibility of a government cover-up. Here we have a mission to Mars which is faked, with three astronauts forced to make out they walked on Mars or else their families will be killed. Receiving no co-operation from his supervisors, he casually mentions the incident to his friend, reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould). ![]() As the flight apparently proceeds on schedule, a NASA technician notices a discrepancy in a computer read-out. On a nearby sound stage, a simulated walk on Mars is set. The astronauts are removed from their spacecraft to an abandoned desert hangar and ordered to participate in an elaborate charade, simulating a Martian landing as cameras roll and with the entire world as an audience. It was a two hour film, but that didn’t seem enough. What I can’t help feeling is that Capricorn One would have been better as a TV miniseries. It remains a memorable movie of the period that should not be picked to pieces by smarty pants students of film, but rewritten and remade with Matt Damon and Adrien Brody, directed by Paul ( The Bourne Supremacy) Greengrass.The whole world is watching the first manned flight to Mars, but its three astronauts are plunged into a hair-raising battle for survival within a clandestine operation involving intrigue and murder. Several minutes could have been cut off the long scene of astronaut Willis wearily climbing a mountain in the desert and talking to himself, only to be captured at the top. There's a surprisingly entertaining cameo from Telly Savalas as the owner of a two-bit crop dusting business. This guy should be at the centre of the film, like a PI on a politically sensitive case (The Parallax View anyone?), not some bumbling oaf who follows his nose, if he can find it, and lucks out.ĭespite flaws that in hindsight appear obvious, it's a great story and Holbrook, especially, is terrific. Elliott Gould, as the maverick reporter, is laughable. All it needs is sharpening the pace and giving the script an infusion of snap-crackle dialogue. Hyams' direction feels goosey loose scenes go on too long. Rather than handing a propaganda goody bag to the nay-sayers in Congress by postponing the mission, Dr Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) takes the decision to go ahead and fake it ("We can't afford to screw up"), relying on his silky smooth powers of persuasion, coupled with guarded threats, to bring the astronauts on side. They discovered a malfunction in the life support system two weeks before the launch and didn't have time to repair or replace it. The motive for subterfuge it is not because the boffins have lost faith in the feasibility of the expedition. ![]() Minutes before lift off, the astronauts are escorted out of the capsule and flown to a secret location in the desert, where a Mars landing site has been prepared beforehand. ![]() The film is entirely too long, clocking in at. ![]() People are smoking, for heaven's sake, on the job! What next? Well, what next is quite a surprise. While the plot will make you take far too many leaps of faith and suspensions of disbelief, it does succeed on keeping you interested. You notice a less frenetic, more calming atmosphere than in Apollo 13. Capricorn One review Richard Holliss Using dubious scientific evidence, they first of all argued that a trip to the moon would have been impossible due to the effects of deadly cosmic radiation, before attacking the photographs from the lunar surface as clever fakes. The control centre at Houston is abuzz (pre-Lightyear), as the countdown counts down. The President, whose ear is seldom far from Capitol Hill, is beginning to lower the temperature on his public support for infinity and beyond, just at the moment when NASA is preparing to send three men to Mars. The euphoria of the moon landings has evaporated and Congress is complaining about cost. The politics of space travel has lost its sex appeal. All Peter Hyams' film lacks is a charismatic leading man to play the investigative journalist and a tough minded editor to tighten loose screws and eradicate the slack from tension lines. Good thrillers are hard to come by and Capricorn One is the mother of conspiracy theories, aching for a firm hand to force it into the paranoid Noughties. Now that Hollywood is rooting around the Seventies for something else to remake, it's no surprise that they've taken an interest in this one.
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