Countdown (1967)

Director: Robert Altman
Starring: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Joanna Moore

Synopsis:
A civilian astronaut replaces the designated candidate for the first mission to the moon for political reasons amid the race with the Soviets.

Impressions:
This movie came out a year before we actually went to the moon (the US release was in '68) and the mission portrayed here is more ambitious than what we actually did. The political climate in the film really charges the core conflict. Robert Duvall and James Caan are quite good as the main characters. If you've seen Apollo 13, think of how Ken Mattingly got bumped off the roster and knock that up in several orders of magnitude and you have some idea of what's going on here. The mission itself is fairly tense and they do a pretty good job of crafting the lunar landscape. If you like movies about the space program, particularly speculative ones, you should like this. Give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It