MOVIE REVIEW | The Final Countdown (1980)

“I have a suspicion history will be a little more difficult to beat, than you imagine Mr. Lasky.”

Sometimes, a movie needs nothing more than bat shit crazy, one line description, and I know I have to see it as soon as possible. “Nazis on the moon” made me see Iron Sky. And even though it was a bit shit, it’s a premise so crazy and cool sounding that if they made a sequel, I’d be in the audience. “A modern aircraft carrier is sent back in time to stop the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor”. Not quite as pithy as “Nazis on the moon”, but still more than enough to make me track down a copy of The Final Countdown as soon as I learned of its existence.

40 years after the Second World War, the state of the art and loaded to the hilt US aircraft carrier the USS Nimitz is making its way through the Pacific with a fleet of other American naval ships. Captained by Matthew Yelland (Kirk Douglas), and with a civilian observer (Martin Sheen as Warren Lasky) onboard, they encounter a strange storm. When the storm passes, the Nimitz is alone, with the rest of the fleet nowhere to be seen.

MOVIE REVIEW | ***AFI WEEKEND*** #30. Apocalypse Now (1979)

“The American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest Movies was selected by AFI’s blue-ribbon panel of more than 1,500 leaders of the American movie community to commemorate 100 Years of Movies”. Every weekend(ish) during 2015, I’ll review two(ish), counting them down from 100 to 1.

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream; that’s my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor… and surviving.”

The top three examples of ego run rampant that ended the director lead era of 70s Hollywood are Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.  Way over time and way over budget, Cimino basically brought down an entire movie studio and ruined his own career.  Way over time and way over budget, Friedkin used every bit of goodwill he’d built with The French Connection and The Exorcist.  And while he’s made more than a few well received movies in the decades since, he never really reached the A-list again.  Way over time and way over budget, Coppola made one of the most deservedly iconic movies of all time.

It’s the Vietnam War and Martin Sheen’s Capt. Willard is a black ops soldier, with several clandestine assassinations to his name.  Which makes him just the man to be covertly sent to Cambodia, where rogue US. Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) has built his own cult like army, and taken to fighting his own war by his own rules.