Sorry for the delay, but after recent server problems, I can finally post my review of CAPRICORN ONE, which was on TCM two Saturdays, late at night. Man, I sure hope my WHERE EAGLES DARE review happens before July.

I'm sure Geoff will be "greatly helped" by my review.



CAPRICORN ONE (1978) - ***

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mouUUWpEec0

After the American space program's miraculous turn-around in the 1960s from a joke who's rockets exploded on the launch pad to the monumental triumph of Apollo 11, people in the 1970s really thought that the manned-mission to Mars was simply inevitable. In 2008, we're still waiting, and experts think that at best, it won't happen for another 20-30 years. The fact that we landed a man on the Moon forty years ago, but with fustrating minimal progress since then, is probably why conspiracy theories about NASA faking the Apollo missions still persist today.

But such beliefs were born in the 70s, the decade of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, where our paranoia at our government was culturally-high. From these days came Peter Hyams' high concept flick CAPRICORN ONE, a mixture of crazy people's ramblings and a good old school conspiracy thriller.

You have NASA about ready to launch its first manned-mission to Mars, only for the crew to be pulled just before ignition. As the empty rocket flies off to the Red Planet, the grounded astronauts learn from NASA Chief Hal Holbrook that weeks earlier, NASA discovered that the machinery was botched, and the crew would surely die.

Really, for a movie full of running, helicopters, and bullets, the memorable scene is when in his monologue, Holbrook goes off emotionally on not just the American government, but the culture itself, for abandoning the trek into space simply for sitcom reruns. You may hate what he does, but can you really blame the guy?

Anyway, since NASA can't afford anymore expensive humiliating failures because their budget is inches away from Congressional castration, Deep Throat talks the astronauts into cooperating to help fake the Mars landing.

So for like 8 months, you have The Juice in O.J. Simpson, ole Sam Waterson, and James Brolin locked up at an abandoned Texas airbase, filming close-up interviews and FX footage until the real rocket blows up upon re-entry. Since this is a cover-up, and astroanuts were publicly declared dead by NASA, they wise-up and escape into the desert.

Hyams is one of those filmmakers who's always been a better producer than director (look at his casting!), but I must say that even if ONE is by-the-book and never escapes its autopilot narrative, he still shoots a solid piece of genre entertainment, much like his 2010 and OUTLAND.

I do dig that when a certain snooping NASA employee disapears into thin air at a bar during a meeting with reporter Elliot Gould, Hyams has no cut away or extraneous scenes showing what exactly happened to him. The audience knows simply that the nerd is as dead as fried chicken, and thats all we need to know. Likewise, as the helicopters with machine guns stalk the astronauts down one by one, we never see their actual demise, but only the emergency flares they fire into the sky in defeat. Again, nice touches for a disposable flick.

If anything, my only serious problem with CAPRICORN ONE is that James Brolin is just rather damn boring as both an actor and as an action figure. You know, the Anti-Josh Brolin.

What if they had Waterson, not Brolin, shoulder the movie's 3rd Act? I mean, we always see Waterson as a prick or brainiac at the movies or TV, but unlike Brolin, he's fun to watch in general, even in the worst LAW & ORDER episodes. His non-action cinema personality would have made us accept the possibility of him "buying the farm," unlike Brolin.

I did notice with ONE that while the movies of the 2000s and 70s share an outright distrust of the establishment, the main difference I see is that the films in this current epoch of Iraq and Katrina display more a lack of confidence with governmental operations.

If ONE had an unstoppable governmental cabal with the guns, money, and courts to back up their power, then THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is about those same people utterly disorganized and impotent when the shit hits the fan. Hell, alot of people probably don't buy the 9/11 conspiracy nonsense simply because that evil operation worked.

That said, the black/brown guy still dies.