Capricorn One Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 1, 2015
Though I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, my very own dear departed maternal grandmother was one of those people who resolutely refused
to believe we had actually landed on the moon. Now Grandma wasn't a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, she was simply a fairly
intelligent but relatively uneducated (or perhaps
undereducated) woman who had witnessed all sorts of technological miracles during
her lifetime but still for whatever reason wasn't able to quite wrap her mind around Man having the wherewithal to shoot three men first into
outer space and then, later, two of them onto the lunar surface. My grandmother never really revealed
how she thought the footage of
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin frolicking in lesser gravity was created, though the obvious implication was that it was all staged. And so for a
certain segment of the population the rather outlandish premise of 1978's
Capricorn One probably played less like a thriller than a
dramatized documentary. The target of the launch might be a tad more ambitious—Mars instead of the moon—but otherwise
Capricorn
One plays solidly to those who
are tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists, positing a shady and corrupt government out to
bamboozle a gullible citizenry into believing that a manned mission to the red planet is actually taking place, when instead an elaborate hoax is
being foisted upon everyone.
Capricorn One is one of those films that depends on an escalating series of improbable events, all of which are only possible due to a
perplexing lack of logic and/or common sense. In this particular case, there actually
is a planned mission to Mars which indeed is in
its
final stages of countdown, supposedly about to launch Lt. Col. Peter Willis (Sam Waterston), Col. Charles Brubaker (James Brolin) and
Commander John Walker (O.J. Simpson) into space. When some malfeasance is uncovered, instead of simply scrubbing the mission, NASA
bigwig James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) decides instead on subterfuge, supposedly fearing that the future of the space program will be
jeopardized if the mission doesn't go off as planned. This is a rather dubious contrivance, and one which tends to offer a relatively shaky
foundation for all that soon follows, but perhaps surprisingly, given an adequate suspension of disbelief,
Capricorn One manages to
deliver a decently fun excursion into a paranoid fantasy of secretive governmental operatives and the (always) black hearts of men. It may
not
have the "allure" of assassination as in
The Parallax View, a film which preceded
Capricorn One by a few years but which
traffics
in much the same angst, but it manages to work up a fair amount of tension, perhaps all the more remarkable given its somewhat ludicrous
premise.
The three putative astronauts are instead whisked away to a top secret location where they're told under various threats to "go along to
get along," and to prepare to act out a "Mars landing" in front of a somewhat miraculously assembled battery of cameras in a television
studio inside a hangar (NASA may have issues with subcontractors in this film, but their ability to create "must see tv" evidently isn't a
problem). Meanwhile, in a tip of the hat to
another film dealing in political conspiracy,
All the President's Men, it's a crusading journalist, Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), who
starts chasing the truth after his version of Deep Throat spills the goods, or at least
tries to before things go awry.
The middle section of
Capricorn One tends to lose a bit of steam, as the astronauts are consigned to acting out their landing even as
Caulfield attempts to figure out what's really going on. However, writer and director Peter Hyams smartly ups the ante as the film works
toward a rabble rousing final act, when yet another plot contrivance suggests that the astronauts' "acting days" may soon be drawing to a
close. While again completely ridiculous, the extended quasi-chase scene that finds the trio wandering through an intentionally ironic alien
looking landscape works up considerable suspense.
While
Capricorn One is a bit too overheated for its own good, and suffers from an increasing sense of incredulity, it's also undeniably
entertaining and, finally, rather exciting. Performances are generally excellent, with Waterston and Brolin managing to bring conviction to
what are essentially one note characters. In fact, a lot of the color of the film comes from the distaff side, with Brenda Vaccaro and the
criminally underrated Denise Nicholas standouts as significant others. Holbrook is typically oily in his affably suave way, and Gould manages
to be engaging as the Everyman peeking beneath the nefarious doings of an ultimately murderous scheme.
Perhaps surprisingly, Hyams, who built his career on more overt action adventure (if often science fiction tinged) fare like
Outland,
2010: The Year We Make Contact and
Timecop, tends to indulge in more of a
quasi-intellectual gambit here, playing on fears that the Powers the Be aren't always acting with the best of intentions, making
Capricorn
One a somewhat exotically placed entry in the post-Watergate slew of paranoid thrillers. NASA's own website has a whole subsection
devoted to our continuing exploration of the red planet.
Capricorn One "believers" might of course tend to argue the many pictures
on the site are just some Photoshopped fever dream of a corporate bureaucrat trying to stay employed. Luckily my grandmother isn't still
around to offer her two cents' worth.
Capricorn One Blu-ray, Video Quality
Capricorn One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Timeless Media Group, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p
transfer in 2.35:1. This is at best a modest offering, and at worst a fairly lackluster one, though one that at least has not been put through a
digital wringer. The general look here is decidedly on the soft side, with even close-ups failing to really deliver superior levels of detail and fine
detail. Midrange and wide shots are even less convincing at times. On the plus side, colors are quite nicely saturated and appear to have
undergone little if any fade. Elements are also in generally fine condition, with only expected anomalies like flecks and specks of dirt showing up.
Grain is occasionally problematic, tending to clump and again at times having an ugly yellow component, a tendency that also afflicts Shout!'s
release of
On Golden Pond, though not to this degree.
For these reasons, some may feel a 3.0
score is overly generous, though to be fair the presentation looks better in motion than some of these screenshots might suggest. That said,
despite the deficiencies on display and room for improvement,
Capricorn One at least offers a generally organic
look if not outstanding levels of depth, clarity and sharpness.
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