Les Jones

A&E > Movie: Capricorn One (1978)

The movie starts during the launch sequence of Capricorn One, America's first manned mission to Mars. Just before takeoff the astronauts are hastily pulled from the command module and the launch continues without them. They're told that a critical failure was discovered in the life support system, but if NASA scrubs the launch the entire Mars program could be cancelled forever. The rest of the mission's communications and video are faked from a studio in the desert.

You know, just like they did for the moon landings. This was the perfect post-Vietnam, post-JFK assassination, post-Watergate movie. It thinks nothing of presenting a conspiracy involving dozens or hundreds of people and multiple agencies (the "federal agents" who plant cocaine in a reporter's apartment had to belong to one of them). Naturally, the conspiracy is coordinated so masterfully that it would have fooled myriad reporters and NASA engineers. The one engineer who gets curious is disappeared and his past obliterated with the high level of efficiency and attention to detail we've come to expect from government agencies like the DMV. I kid, but to the director's credit, the movie as presented is plausible if you don't ask too many questions.

The cast includes period stalwarts Hal Holbrook as the mission commander, Elliott Gould as a reporter who smells something fishy, Telly Savalas as an ornery cropduster, and James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, and Sam Waterston as the astronauts.

It's hard to imagine the days when O.J. Simpson had a leading role in a serious movie, and that isn't the only thing that's changed since the seventies. Capricorn One harks back to the days when the United States had a space exploration program, as opposed to a low-orbit package delivery service. It was a time when conference rooms had ashtrays. When a woman would casually ask Elliott Gould to jump her after a few drinks. When mighty men labored in the formica mines and plywood trees stood tall against the sky. It's a good movie that also just happens to encapsulate the ethos of the era.