Conto alla rovescia

The Americans and Russians are in a race to the moon. For political reasons, Air Force pilot Robert Duvall is replaced by civilian James Caan as the astronaut for the mission. This leads to personal conflicts between the two and general doubts about whether Caan can pull the mission off. Director Robert Altman's space drama is a mostly unimpressive, static effort. If I didn't know better I would assume it was made-for-TV. Lacking in special effects and choosing instead to focus on the personal drama between the various parties involved in the space program, it can be a tough slog at times. It's very dry and has long stretches where it's boring. It's also lacking in the kind of suspense necessary for a story about a race to the moon. Anti-climactic ending doesn't help, either. If you're a fan of movies about the space program perhaps you should check it out. Otherwise I can't recommend it.

COUNTDOWN stars James Caan as Lee Stegler, a civilian, who is chosen at the last minute to replace a career astronaut (Robert Duvall) for a moon mission. It's during the heat of the great "space race" between the USA and the USSR, and politicians have decided that a non-military representative must be chosen.

After an eternity of training, squabbling, and other padding, Stegler finally blasts off, only to find himself in a dangerous situation.

Mr. Caan is believable in his role, as is Mr. Duvall, whose character -somewhat- prefigures his role in THE GREAT SANTINI. The animus that his character shows toward Stegler feels like a genuinely bruised ego.

Not a bad science fiction film that may seem sort of hokey to modern audiences who have no idea how exciting this superpower rivalry actually was...

Released two months before '2001: A Space Odyssey', and on a soap opera scale compared to that, 'Countdown' comes from a time when movies didn't have to have huge budgets, big stars or auteur directors to get national distribution: I saw it as a second feature (remember them? - to 'Ice Station Zebra', I think, a far worse movie) in one of the now defunct three small cinemas in my home town. It's pretty formulaic, with a 'time clock' plot, a little bit of character play, a fair bit of topicality, and for its time and budget, a reasonable stab at gritty space realism, compared to the stagey, squeaky 'Star Trek' universe that had boldly gone on TV only two years before, and Kubrick's tour de force that was to follow shortly. Interesting as a snapshot of cinema history, with a director and lead actor (and Robert Duvall) who went on to join the A-list, which nobody knew about then. They don't make 'em like this any more; or if they do, they go straight to DVD.

A comment on "Marooned", the movie that was made about a moon mission disaster which was released after the Apollo 11 landing but prior to the Apollo 13 real-life disaster, mentioned that the movie is not available on DVD and rarely, if ever, appears on television. I believe that the same is true of this movie (at least regards TV screenings) and it's for the same reason. "Marooned" and "Countdown" are movies that are so much of their period that they scarcely make any sense at all to 21st Century minds. Of course, we all know about the Cold War, and most cold war movies involve international espionage which is timeless.

Countdown is a movie about the Space Race which dominated the daily agenda at least as much as conventional Cold War conflicts like the Korean and Vietnam wars. The plot concerns a situation in which the Soviets succeeded in their aim to send a manned rocket to the Moon before the Americans were ready to fly Apollo. However, contact with the cosmonauts has been lost, and there is still a chance for NASA to fulfill Kennedy's challenge of "sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" - as well as the kudos gained from discovering and being the ones to tell the Soviets what happened to their men.

An interesting sideline on this is that the actually successful method of moon exploration used, ie send three men to lunar orbit and then two can travel to the surface in a smaller ship, is certainly not the only solution, and this movie explores a different one forced by necessity. Since Apollo is not ready and there is no lunar lander capable of taking off from the moon, why not send a less complex ship with only one man, and let him stay on the moon, kept alive by an environment habitat sent on ahead by unmanned rocket and by provision of supplies by further unmanned ships? Such a scenario had already been envisioned by science fiction authors like Arthur C. Clarke as being the most efficient way to explore our satellite. Certainly nobody had previously imagined that we would send men to the Moon for a matter of a few days in a ship which could not carry more than a few hundred pounds of samples back to Earth. By exploring this other methodology this movie succeeds in highlighting the true nature of our Lunar adventure. The point was not to expand the human frontier or to increase the sum of scientific knowledge - the point was to get a man on the moon and safely back before the Russians did.

I've just got to throw my 2 cents in. I thought the Countdown was an excellent movie. The acting is what carries it for sure, but the special effects aren't bad either for the time period.

I've seen Apollo 13 with Hanks and I thought this picture did a better job of portraying tension, ( although fictitious ) within the capsule. Robert Duvall is a superior actor as is James Caan. The overall dismay he portrays when not picked for the mission, and the subsiquent attempt to discredit Caan is great acting!