Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

NASA launches Capricorn One into space on its way to Mars. The space program is under financial stress and the President can't even bother to show up for the launch. The astronauts Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and John Walker (O. J. Simpson) are surprised to be secreted away. Director Dr. James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) tells them that the life support system was found fatally flawed. Instead of scrubbing the mission, Kelloway pressures them to fake the Martian landing. Few people would be involved in the cover up. A technician discovers the conspiracy but then he disappears which alarms his investigative journalist friend Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould).It's an interesting premise for the paranoid conspiracy era. The story has great potential. I prefer staying more with the astronauts and the reporter. I don't think most of the scenes at the control room are that compelling. The movie feels a little scattered until the plane helicopters chase. That is a great sequence. It is a thrilling stunt and amazingly shot.

I randomly stumbled across the film "Capricorn One" (released before my time) and I had to check out. The premise of the film sounded very interesting and the movie looked like something that may be more about story and no so much theatrics like the films of 2014 and up. Watching this film I was not disappointed. The story is interesting and exciting, the acting is excellent, and overall this is a pretty good B grade sci fi film that has stood the test of time. I really enjoyed Capricorn One and I have to say this movie is a must-watch if you are a fan of classic and/or sci fi flicks. In a nutshell, Capricorn One is a film about a NASA hoax where astronauts perform a Mars landing on a soundstage fooling the country and families of the astronauts alike. The film revolves around the drama and conspiracies of what is going on within the confines of NASA and the struggles of the astronauts trying to maintain the secret. The rest is pretty self explanatory and you just have to watch the film to see all the events of the film unfold! This movie has a lot of pluses going for it. Great cast, great storyline, and overall it is just a great film. For a while I forgot I was watching a movie that is almost 40 years old now! The only bumps in this movie are in the scientific area. The Saturn V was no where powerful enough to travel to Mars. The ships were too small to carry enough oxygen and supplies for such a trip. The LEM from the Moon was the same design for Mars, and the LEM was completely incapable of ever landing on Mars. One of the main (and only) reasons I am docking a few points for the film is that they blatantly ignored scientific facts about landing on Mars. Even someone that doesn't know NASA science that well should know that a LEM cannot land on Mars and how ridiculous the entire concept of the Mars mission in this film was. Besides the scientific fact, I won't spoil the movie but I was hoping for a more "satisfying" ending... Overall, Capricorn One is a great movie.One of the reasons I think this movie has been "swept under the rug" (meaning you don't see it much on streaming services such as Netflix or hear about it much in modern times) is I think because of O.J. Simpson's notoriety. This film is a great movie with a diverse cast and you are missing out on a great film (as well as not admiring the performance from the rest of the cast) by avoiding this film simply because of O.J. Simpson. This film came out far before he ever committed any crimes or had any notoriety. If you get the chance, check out this film. It is very enjoyable and I hope some day it gets a proper remastering in blu ray!

With NASA feeling the burn of limited funded, their ultimate space exploration project, which entails sending a manned mission to Mars, must be a full-fledged success. However, when the on-board life support systems are deemed faulty just days prior to launch, the entire crew of the space shuttle: commander Charles Brubakar (James Brolin) and his two assisting astronauts Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and John Walker (O.J. Simpson), are whisked away during the flight's countdown to an unnamed location. There they are coerced (partially through threats) to fake the entire Mars mission with the use of a Hollywood set. Meanwhile, the head of the space mission Dr James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) will stop at nothing to quell any doubts surrounding the Mars shuttle.When a pesky journalist Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) stumbles upon the truth, the complex fake risks being exposed... But the mission must remain an unmitigated success. Any problems must be dealt with, whether it be a console technician discovering the truth or the inbound Mars craft burning in the atmosphere.Writer/director Peter Hyams, not especially revered for his body of work, stumbles upon an intriguing plot concept, but ultimately fails to craft a workable story around it. The sci-fi elements are pretty scarce, with fantastic elements going as far as suggesting that the drab and scientifically benign NASA can essentially be a self-serving and ruthless secretive agency. With his space rendition of "Wag the Dog" the overlying story is derailed by a muddled pacing and lack of honest idea as to what exactly the movie is, essentially spiralling into a lumberous thriller with little interest in forwarding the premise. The three astronauts are seriously short-changed, hardly creating a screen presence before the final act comes up, making it hard to really sympathise or even understand their plight. James Brolin, partly due to the uncanny resemblance to his son, stands out nonetheless as the moral backbone around which right and wrong is determined.Even more detrimental is the wayward focus, which swiftly tracks back from building the hoax (all but three scenes actually present the crew of the fake Mars mission and almost no focus is placed on the attempt to cheat the world public), instead starting to build a meandering backdrop for journalist Caulfield and his mildly intriguing investigation. Finally the movie shifts a gear, suddenly turning into a prolonged chase sequence. In itself the action is swift and at times compelling viewing, but it also further derails attention from the essence of the story - the hoax itself. Whereas "Wag the Dog" manages to take the sociological context and expand on it to deliver a riveting farce on media in general, "Capricorn 1" starts off with its conspiracy theorist pretext and mounts it onto a craft with not enough thrust to lift it outside of mediocrity.

What if a televised Mars landing was an elaborate hoax? And what if, because of an accident, the "astronauts" are believed killed when their capsule burns up in the atmosphere? Why, they would become expendable if the government was ruthless enough to kill them, which for the three "astronauts" of this film(James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O.J. Simpson(!) is exactly what happens, though they manage to escape by plane into the desert, being pursued not only by the corrupt head of the project(played by Hal Holbrook) but also investigative newspaper reporter Elliot Gould, who risks his career and life to track them down, and get his story.Despite the fanciful premise, this a smart, taut, and breathless film from Peter Hyams,that involves the viewer both emotionally and intellectually, leading to a most satisfying ending.