Countdown (1968)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Am I Missing Something?

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A geologist(James Caan)working for NASA gets the opportunity of a lifetime. Since US government will not allow perhaps a better candidate(Robert Duvall), an "air-force guy", to pilot the PILGRIM capsule to the moon, a civilian is needed and Caan is their boy. It's all about beating the Russians to the moon and first-time feature film director Robert Altman takes the helm fashioning it into a matter-of-fact documentary type deal where we see how everything takes place prior to launch. The media swarm, the rivalries(Duvall's Chiz is indeed screwed out of an opportunity), how the families cope, the spent time before that fateful trip, the planning, the testing, the debating on who should be piloting the capsule..everything is shown to us so that we get a clear picture of what it is like in not only the pilot's life, but also those that worry about the mission themselves.I must say this film is exceptionally well made, with an intelligent approach which tries to explain to us the hullabaloo that surfaces at such a historic event and how that effects Caan and his family along the way. It all comes down to that trip, though, that really provides some suspense. It's a curio piece also considering it features Duvall and Caan in the early stages of their careers as well as seeing the beginning of Altman's reign as an unusual artist with his camera placements and how the characters speak to one another(there is some moments where people talk over each other during discussions mainly in the sequences where Caan is in the capsule nearing the orbit of the moon).

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!

This pre-MASH Altman flick will probably be uninteresting to anyone who is not an Altman fan. Maybe a hard-core sci-fi fan would like it for the novelty, but, let me warn you, it is barely a sci-fi movie. It tries to be as realistic as possible. It is an interesting prediction of the actual moon landing, which would happen a bit over a year from Countdown's release date. As an Altman film, it is an interesting precursor to MASH, but it is a little bit too mainstream for Altman buffs. I don't know whether the conventions of an astronaut film were instated before this film or whether they were set up here, but you won't find anything that much different from Apollo 13 or even Armageddon. Most of the scenes include a bunch of scientists sitting in front of panels, with some cross-cutting between them and the astronaut, James Caan. There are a few inventive touches in the direction, including a cut that predates 2001's bone-to-satellite edit by a few months: Caan throws a baseball into the air, we are blinded by the sun, and an invisible edit takes us to the launching platform at Cape Kennedy. Actually, since 2001 was released only a few months afterwards, this film was likely buried under that film's glory (even though many despised that film upon its release). Also, another famous sci-fi film appeared around the same time as Countdown: Planet of the Apes. The acting may be the film's saving grace. Both James Caan and Robert Duvall give top-notch performances. So does Joanna Cook Moore, who plays Caan's worried wife. Most of the other actors are hardly distinguishable. Look out for Barbara Baxley and Michael Murphy, who were both in Altman's Nashville in 1975 (which I watched earlier this afternoon for about the fifth time).