RETRO MOVIE REVIEW: CAPRICORN ONE, 1978

CAPRICORN ONE, 1978. Directed by Peter Hyams (OUTLAND, 1981, 2010, 1984). Starring James Brolin, Hal Holbrook, and Elliott Gould.

I forgot how cool this flick is. I’m dating myself here, but I have a fond memory of watching this thriller on a hot summer night at the drive-in. As a child I could not conceive of the idea that the moon landing might have been faked, a big and elaborately produced hoax. Then, but a mere nine years later, CAPRICORN ONE is released and adds fuel to the conspiracy theory. CAPRICORN ONE is not a low budget docudrama detailing a hack point off view about an on-going conspiracy theory, it is a major motion picture that rationalizes the concept and turns it into a very fun piece of entertainment.

The story is about a NASA mission to Mars that goes bust and how they plan to make it look as though everything is hunky-dory. It seems that faulty manufactured life support systems would fail and ultimately kill the astronauts (James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and O.J. Simpson) months before they reached the Red Planet. The director of the program, played by Hal Holbrook, has an idea to save face and the billion dollar funding of the botched mission. He has the astronauts extracted before the launch and secreted away to a remote facility in the desert so they can be filmed on a set in order to dupe the investors and the people of the world. The astronauts are strong-armed into cooperating, if they don’t, the lives of their families are threatened. As the world tunes into the televised hoax a reporter, played by Elliott Gould, gets wind that something might be wrong. As he begins to unravel the truth his life is continually threatened, but that does not stop him from pursuing the story and exposing the truth. After months of faking the mission the astronauts are pronounced dead during re-entry. It won’t be easy to keep this secret because the astronauts escape which leads to a really cool chase in the Nevada desert.

I find the film more fascinating today then I have in the past because we now live in a time when people are skeptical of everything. With the technology of today (Deepfake programs for example) any kid with a laptop can manipulate images and sound and make it look very convincing. What’s more dangerous is the technology today is being manipulated by the news outlets, governments, and social media platforms all over the world and force-fed to the masses in order to achieve whatever agenda they have in mind. There is a moment in the film when the James Brolin character vacations to a film set and realizes that the filmmaking process is becoming so advanced that anything can be realized. Then, ironically, he is forced into a production that would fool the world.

This is a great conspiracy thriller loaded with many layers of intrigue that stands the test of time. It’s a fun film to watch and chuckle about how things have turned out over the last 40 years.