Capricorn One (1978)

Very best movie i ever watch

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Best movie ever!

I love this film. I must have been about 10 when I first saw on tv this around 1981. Probably one of the first "grown up" films I watched, so some of the plot possibly went over my head but the action scenes of the second half really stuck with me. Then as I was older each time it was on I'd watch it with a little more understanding. It's very much a film of two halves, the first quite slow paced and lots of talking, setting the story out. The second half picks the pace up and delivers so great moments. It's not a classic, but if you come across it on tv or streaming service it's worthy of your attention.

When I saw this on TV around 12 years old back in the very early nineties, it blew my mind. I thought it was the perfect film, with a great balance of intrigue, suspense and action. I absolutely loved the spookiness of the birds becoming helicopters, I hadn't seen something so creatively chilling like that in a movie before - brilliant touch of inspiration from Hyams. I still love the film, but more for its occasional ideas and overall ballsy story and atmospheres. On a rewatch as an adult (I have seen it many times between) I wonder whether the right director could remake an amazing version of it. There's something incredibly timely about its essence, the idea of a huge corporate cover-up (I imagine Hyams originally wanted to have the government in on it to beat the Russians, rather than NASA trying to secure more funding!) and also the fantasy of seeing a huge conspiracy blown wide-open. Random Thoughts: If I said to you "what film has James Brolin, features a huge fake western set where someone ends up getting shot at by real bullets, and another scene involving a rattlesnake?" Everyone would say "Westworld" but all are true of Capricorn One too!I would love to have seen Michael Crichton directing this instead of Hyams. I love Crichton's sense of suspense and eeriness in Westworld and Coma, and think he'd have been great for this. I absolutely love the scene where Brubaker conveys the subtle idea to his wife of everything being fake. Its a really subtle moment, and a great bit of writing - and nice to rely on the audience to want to go back to her micro-expression quizzical look and learn the truth via the implication in the home movies. Its annoying though that his wife, although intelligent, doesn't look into this at all or have any idea why he would make an obvious mistake like that. Here's what needs fixing: Pacing issues - some really unnecessarily long takes and scenes dilute the intrigue and suspense. The mother reading a Dr Seuss story to her kids for a long while, Hal Holbrook visiting her by a pool to invite her to the memorial, Elliot Gould milling around his apartment for a while before the feds bust in, lots of empty scenes in NASA control - it all just needs tightening up. Its clear that James Brolin (looking a spitting image of Christian Bale just like he did in Westworld) is the 'intelligent one' and therefore the worthy hero - lets just kill off these other two celebrated astronauts who were about to go to Mars! No one cares about the badly acted OJ Simpson and the other annoying-wisecracking fool! I love Hal Holbrook's ambiguity as a bad guy - he starts off like his hands are tied, and has no choice, but ends up happily assigning hits on quite a few people. I wanted to see more of his complex motives and character, and more of a denouement. There's something hugely annoying about Elliot Gould, he speaks every line like he's in a self-conscious 'witty' film, literally like he belongs in another movie. The dialogue between him and the Karen Black is often embarrassingly theatrical and fake sounding. Its strange when he finally meets with heroic astronaut Brubaker and wisely they don't share a word together - even just running alongside him feels incongruent as I can't imagine their worlds colliding. There's a huge plothole in terms of Elliot Gould's actions. He finds the secret warehouse - fine - then finds a necklace of Brubaker's. Somehow he psychically guesses that he must have escaped and heads out in the plane to find him. There is no logic to this! Surely he'd have assumed that Brubaker and the others were simply killed at the warehouse. It would have been better if he found the broken door, seen the crashed plane or something like that. Elliot Gould is a journalist, yet when finding out his friend has been 'erased' does absolutely nothing about it. Surely he could have interviewed his friends' colleagues, found evidence of his existence? He doesn't even go to NASA, or show any anger.

To put it politely : this is not the most sophisticated and accomplished movie ever made about space exploration, just as it is not the most sophisticated and accomplished movie ever made about propaganda, conspiracy and deception.Strangely "Capricorn One" somehow succeeds in gripping the imagination and telling a rousing, suspenseful story. I suppose that at least part of the attraction lies in an almost archetypal sense of tragedy : here we've got three men of genuine courage and accomplishment, who are manipulated and betrayed by parasites, cheats and liars. It's like seeing lions surrounded by hyenas, or hunting hounds surrounded by sewer rats.There is also a cleverly devised atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia.It's strange how much our culture has changed since "Capricorn One". There have always been conspiracy theorists peddling themes like "The moon landings were faked". These people used to be members of a minuscule fringe movement, viewed with a mixture of pity and ridicule. Nowadays the madmen have taken over the asylum : look up "moon landings" on the internet and you can find reams and reams and reams of text explaining, for instance, how NASA is too incompetent to operate a coffee machine, how the earth is flat, how the earth is hexagonal, how Mr. Kubrick was paid a fortune in order to forge footage, how Mr. Kennedy struck a deal with aliens, how Apollo Thirteen was Apollo Four, Five, Six-and-a-half, Nineteen or Thirty, how it's impossible to take a picture of a celestial object, how Einstein correctly predicted that no human could leave earth, and so on (and on, and on, and on). These people have grown - not only in number but also in stridency, aggression, influence and arrogance.It worries the hell out of me.

TV didn't kill radio, it just transferred a lot of entertainment from sound to vision. News and music radio is still alive. TV didn't kill the movies, it just forced them to be more entertaining. And you could throw in a few swear words to delineate the medium. People want to be entertained, and as we see here that was the paramount objective at any show then as well as now. Oh - The moon landings were real - the Soviets were watching EVERY move and zeroed every telemetry and voice transmission. Any fakery would have been called out immediately, loudly, and triumphantly, because if anyone had a reason to fake it, it was the then-USSR. Now I'll leave you to wikipedia for that story, but that's something I needed to get straight here right away.Here we have a real popcorn 1970's style film, replete with big names and contemporary TV personalities. It's factually inaccurate and disastrously so, with plot holes galore (they incessantly point out the delays in radio transmission and they keep happening in real time, lol). Yet it works somehow, and that's because the back story of a faked space mission is so compelling.Great script and really great music from Jerry Goldsmith round it out for a real Saturday afternoon treat. Remember that? Greasy 'buttered' popcorn? Smoking allowed n the Balcony? Dots, Sugar Babies and Chuckles in BIG packages? Here's the movie for it.All actors, OJ included, do a bang up job. Elliot Gould is a pro, Brolin and Waterston too. Hal Holbrook really puts his all into his character and shines. The aerial stunts are insane. The cinematography, in particular the lighting, is really top notch. It shows that even a third-rate Hollywood flick was imp0ortant enough to do a first rate job on. Worth watching any time.