LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

runamokprods Mostly good, solid, well acted (especially by Robert Duvall and James Caan) story of behind the scenes politics among astronauts as we raced Russia towards the moon in the late 1960s. Gets a little soapy at times, some of the politics and science seem a little cheated, and key incidents are convenient and co-incidental. Production values, especially the special effects, are pretty weak. And Caan's astronaut is a little too open with his fears to be believed as a man of his position at that moment in history. On the other hand it's impressive that in 1969 someone made a space movie focusing on complex emotions and human behavior, not technology. The climax is a bit 'Hollywood', although at least a little more bittersweet than usual, if predictable (and a cheat). The small roles are well cast and played. Not really recognizably an Altman film, but certainly shows talent and is worth seeing.

Film_Angenieux Not a great film but very much worth it for Altman fans. In many ways it's a conventional cold war drama, but it has some wicked resonances if you see the Robert Duvall astronaut character as what he was surely meant to be: an over the top version of John Glenn: a boy scout rah rah guy who can't stand the much hipper, laid back James Caan, who is a stand-in for the real astronaut Al Shepard. (Wolfe's The Right Stuff, if I recall, has useful material on the mutual distrust between Glenn and Shepard.) Altman tries a few tricks for which he is later famous. The primary one is overlapping dialogue. Altman hated the formal style of traditional films in which everyone speaks in complete sentences and never overlaps. You can see the overlapping here, though not to the degree that comes through in later films like M*A*S*H and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Still, the innovation was enough to infuriate the studio execs when they began viewing the rough cut. Hey! We can't understand half of what the actors are saying! So they fired Altman about nine-tenths of the way through shooting. Watch closely and toward the end of the picture, you'll see a change in style as the replacement director takes over. It's much more stilted (especially in the press conference). And I recall (though can't be sure at this remove, I haven't seen or read about the picture in decades) that the original ending was a tragedy, which was changed to a happy one instead.The most effective aspect of Altman's interest in sound design was what he did when Caan loses contact with ground control as he approaches the moon. Altman heightens anxiety (Caan is already worried that Duvall is endangering his life) when the radio contact picks up static and it gets hard to hear. Caan begins to feel all alone out there, millions of miles from earth. And so do we, instinctively...we want to hear what Mission Control is saying, and their words keep breaking up. Very clever: using +bad+ sound to make viewers unconsciously uneasy. It's a great way to accomplish your goal on a lower budget project.

evanston_dad "Countdown," Robert Altman's first theatrical release, is the only film I've seen by the prolific director that feels nothing like an Altman project. A bit of history surrounding it reveals that Altman battled the studios over creative control, and that the final version of the film exists more as a product of the studio than of the auteur. Never again, for better or worse, would Altman relinquish control of his films, a tenacity that won him an instantly recognizable style not afforded to many other directors.So "Countdown" isn't terribly interesting formally and feels like it could have been directed by anybody, but that's not to say it isn't an interesting movie. Released a year before man actually landed on the moon, it provides a remarkably accurate guess at what such a feat would look like, and the film is played with conviction by a strong cast of actors led by James Caan, Robert Duvall and Michael Murphy. Duvall and Murphy would appear again in "MASH," and Murphy would go on to become an Altman regular. Barbara Baxley, known to Altman devotees as Haven Hamilton's wife in "Nashville," fulfills wifely duties in this film as well, though women may as well not even exist for all the attention the screenplay affords them.As a studio film, "Countdown" isn't half bad. As an Altman film, it's one of his weakest. But nevertheless, it's well worth seeking out, especially for fans of the iconoclastic director.Grade: B-

shank6 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!