Saga reviews THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
I now believe in demonic possession. And it's all possibly thanks to Kirk Douglass and Martin Sheen.
See, nothing short of demonic possession (and an atypical abundance of vacation-induced, wife-is-away, time to kill) could possibly have compelled me to seek out, rent, and watch the movie THE FINAL COUNTDOWN tonight. The sick thing is, I've had urges, embarrassing private urges, to watch this film for days, ever since I heard that great 80s song by Europe, “The Final Countdown” (which, much to my disappointment, appeared NOWHERE in the movie, although somehow I had been convinced it would), and a few neurons firing in a fit of nostalgia made me recall that this movie existed, with its premise of a modern (well, for the early 80s) aircraft carrier being hurled back in time to Pearl Harbor on the eve of the Japanese attack...and made me want to go watch it. Mainly because I really wanted to hear that song playing in the background while planes engaged in dogfights and all kinds of shit blew up.
Okay, Joey Tempest wrote the lyrics to this song, and the aircraft carrier in the movie gets sucked into a giant storm at sea that shoots them through time, so maybe that's the connection?
Well, I can't say that the universe didn't TRY to save me from my own stupidity. Neither Netflix, Comcast On-Demand, nor Amazon Unboxed had the movie available for instant watching. None of the local video stores (yes, a few still do exist) did either. I couldn't even find a pirate torrent of it. Finally, giving it one more shot today, I located it in the half-buried “VHS” section of a video store in Central Square, just a few feet away from the curtained-off porno area. The clerk was shocked, and said no one had taken this thing out for 8 years. This all should have given me some hints. But hey, the box said Kirk Douglass and Martin Sheen were in it. Surely such august personages wouldn't have leant their names to any old drivel, right?
”Sir, our orders say we're to rendezvous with some guy named Grignr, to seek out the Eye of Argon...”
So I dusted off my *V*C*R* (yes, children, the legends are true, such wonder machines really did exist), and thrilled to the sound of a squealing, protesting strip of celluloid tape that hadn't seen action since the first year of the Bush Administration reluctantly move until pictures appeared on my screen.
Now, normally this is where I would warn you about impending spoilers, but you know what, that word implies that there is something in the film to actually spoil. No one worries about “spoiling” ten day old Turkey leftovers, because they have already gone bad, nay, bypassed bad and pushed straight on to putrefying. So here we go.
The film is about 90 minutes long (emphasis on LONG), with easily 45 of those minutes taken up by military stock footage of planes taking off, planes landing, planes taking off, planes landing, ground crews rushing to get the planes ready for takeoff and landing, etc. Apparently this movie was actually made aboard the USS Nimitz, which is the aircraft carrier in the movie that makes the temporal journey.
Artist's rendition of THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE MOVIE.
The first 15 minutes or so involve Martin Sheen as a defense department efficiency expert being told by two mysterious men unapologetically wearing pastel blue suits that some mysterious benefactor wishes him well on this cruise. He is then flown by helicopter to the USS Nimitz in what seems like real time, with the chopper crew stopping briefly to mock a Russian fishing boat. I imagine that back in the good old Cold War this would have elicited much chuckling from the audience, although the racism that really shines through in this film is that vintage 1980s Japanophobia...but that comes a bit later.
Sheen's character is introduced to what seems like the whole f'ing crew of the Nimitz, only 2 or 3 of whom ever appear again or get a line. The communications crew makes fun of the Russians again. We are treated to many lengthy scenes of walking through the carrier's halls, and then our captain, Kirk Douglass, orders all planes to land, and yes, we get to see every g-d-mn plane land, in real time. It gave me trauma-flashbacks to the Nintendo game TOP GUN, where I'd survive super-deadly dogfights only to crash into the ocean every damned time I tried to land the plane on the fucking aircraft carrier, the one part of the game that apparently required you to actually BE a real live fighterpilot to complete.
THIS was the Japanese's REAL revenge for their defeat in the Pacific War...tormenting a generation of American kids!
Martin Sheen breaks into the room of the CAG, Commander Owens, who happens to be a Pearl Harbor history buff. Hmm, I wonder what relevance this might have later on?
Anyway, if you didn't catch the few bits of foreshadowing with some Native American weather officer named Black Cloud reporting on a weird storm (Get it? He's the WEATHER guy, and his name is BLACK CLOUD, and he's reporting on a STORM!), after endless plane landing scenes, culminating in “our newest pilot” (he merits no name, apparently) having trouble and being forced to make an emergency crashdown, a temporal storm appears. Captain Kirk Douglass orders his destroyer escort to turn back (I looked on some website which told me this is actually against regulations, since destroyers are needed especially during storms because that's when submarines, which are unaffected by weather, are most likely to attack)...then the temporal storm hits, and swirly blue lights make everyone on the ship writhe and pass out.
Ooh! Swirly!
They then get through the storm and “our newest pilot” crash lands, is dragged away by rescue crews, and is never mentioned in the movie ever again. What was the freaking point? No time to ponder - the crew soon makes discovery after discovery that convinces them that they've traveled back in time to Dec 6, 1941. Most of these discoveries involve sending out AWACs and F14 Tomcats to do reconnaissance, which means, yep, more takeoff, landing, and even a few refueling scenes. By this point I am beginning to think I have observed enough to actually be able to FLY a plane now.
Once the full impact of their discovery hits them, what follows is some of the worst acting I've ever seen, particularly from the first officer, the Token Black Guy in the Movie, who, basically delivers the lines “this can't be happening, my head is ringing, this is insane” as if he's reading monotone off cue cards, and then kind of vanishes from the movie.
The sad thing is, this actor was in Superfly. Seriously!
Meanwhile, we cut to a scene on a boat where a US Senator played by the same guy who voices Peter's religious father on FAMILY GUY is vacationing with his secretary, Katharine Ross...that's right, Elaine, from the Graduate. She's aged pretty damned well since the 1960s, although by the time she plays Donnie Darko's shrink in 2001 she's gone a good deal downhill. Despite this being 1941, they're all dressed pretty much in 80s fashion, and use 80s speech patterns.
A couple of Japanese Zeros strafe their boat and kill everyone except them and their dog (yes, their dog, Charlie), before Kirk Douglass orders two of his F-14s to intercept them. What follows is the ONLY ACTUAL DOGFIGHT SEQUENCE in the movie, and it's pretty sad - the F-14s do all kinds of crazy barrel rolls and nap-of-the-sea tricks before finally just blowing the Zeroes to pieces. Fuck history. So what if one of those Japanese guys would have gone on to father the guy who invented Hybrid cars? This was the 80s, and everyone was pissed because the Japanese were buying up half the country. The Nimitz crew members freely use the epithet "Jap" as if they were comfortable residents of 1941 and not enlightened visitors. Ah, the days before PC.
We never actually USED these planes in a war, but it's a good thing Reagan deficit-spent us into oblivion to build a zillion of them, 'cause if 50 year old antique planes ever attacked us, they would totally kick their balsa-wood asses. For our next trick, we'll get a Black Hawk helicopter to shoot down the Red Baron!
Anyhoo, they rescue Mr. Griffith and Elaine and the dog, and also one of the Japanese pilots, who they interrogate with their one Japanese American guy on board. Commander Owens (the Pearl Harbor buff) makes it clear he has the hots for Elaine. Then Japanese POW guy swipes a gun and kills like a dozen redshirts, takes Elaine hostage, and we are then treated to a PAINFUL hostage negotiation scene where everything Kirk Douglass says has to be translated into Japanese.
”Beeeeennnn! Save me from the Yellow Peril!”
Now, I speak enough Japanese to be able to tell that neither of the actors actually speaks it much better than I do. The actor playing the Japanese American officer has clearly memorized a sequence of words because he's saying them all with equal inflection, with no care to where sentences end and begin. The actor playing the Zero pilot has better Japanese, but basically just screams all his lines and waves his gun around menacingly like he's the boogeyman. He kills a few more marines.
Despite all this, Kirk Douglass remains entirely blase - at the most, a little annoyed - throughout the whole scene. I mean, come on! Captain Picard was an effete French archeologist, yet when Q started freezing his crew members he screamed “Get off my bridge!” Yet Kirk Douglass just kind of ambles about and gives into the pilot's demands to use a radio, but one of the marines finally takes him out, and that's that. The crew goes right on about their business from here on in, despite the fact that like a dozen people have been brutally slaughtered, and no mention of this is ever made again.
”No, seriously, I was in Inherit the Wind.”
I guess to lighten the mood after all of this, there is a baffling scene of Martin Sheen chasing Elaine's dog through the ship. Now hold on. This is a nuclear aircraft carrier, one at battle stations and red alert no less, and the crew just lets a freaking dog wander around? And no one tries to catch it, or pen it, or (G-d forbid) shoot it and throw it overboard? No, they just let it traipse all through the decks while the civilian on board (and isn't he supposed to be escorted everywhere? He is at the beginning, but that kind of gets forgotten as the movie goes on) chases it down.
Senator Mr. Griffith was apparently going to be President before history says he “vanished,” and throws his weight around, and demands to contact Pearl Harbor, which Kirk Douglass lets him do, inexplicably, after having ordered him quarantined earlier, but no one believes he's who he says he is. Mr. Griffith and Elaine are amazed at the technology on board, but interestingly neither comments on the seeming impossibility of the African American first officer, who in 1941 would still have had to serve in a segregated unit (Truman was the one who desegregated the army a few years later).
Meanwhile, Kirk Douglass decides that, since it's his job to defend the USA no matter what history says happens before or after, the Nimitz is going to take out the whole Japanese fleet. Oh shit, this means more planes are going to launch. Yup. Much launch footage later, Kirk Douglass gives in to Mr. Griffith's demands to be helicopter lifted back to Pearl Harbor, but has him dropped off on a random island instead, “to be safer.” But Mr. Griffith hijacks the helicopter with a gun, kicks Elaine and Owens off on the island and then gets into a scuffle, fires the gun once and...get ready for it...the helicopter explodes!!!!
Now, hold the fucking phone. How does one bullet, fired from within a helicopter, make it explode? I mean, are the cabins filled with 100% pure oxygen or something? Maybe they are, I don't know, but in this scene the bay doors are clearly open, so I'm thinking, no, it's the usual 75% nitrogen stuff we breathe every day, which tends NOT to explode when you fire a gun in it. It's not even a pressurized craft (remember, the bay doors are open), so a bullet is at worst going to punch a hole in the hull and provide extra ventilation, or maybe ricochet around and kill someone, but explode the whole copter?
This was the most amazing anal-rape of the laws of physics I have ever seen in a movie. I am just stunned. I mean, was he using depleted uranium bullets or something? WHAT THE HELL?
Even in OPERATION WOLF, when somehow your character could impossibly take down a helicopter with just a handgun, at least you had to shoot it like 50 times
So it's a good thing those Japanese Zeros didn't have handguns, or the whole USS Nimitz would be in danger. Anyway, Kirk Douglass is informed that the copter just “disappeared”, but he says there's no time to lose, he presses on with the attack....
In this vision of the 1980s, the Air Force apparently outsourced to the crew of the Black Pearl...yarr!
...when, all of a sudden, the time portal conveniently opens again, and actually CHASES the aircraft carrier when it tries to flee, and finally Kirk Douglass realizes He Can't Change History, and orders the planes back (which is stupid, because the portal is still far away and the pilots complain “we can see the bogies right now!”, so they totally could have taken out at least a good chunk of the Zeroes before leaving...but, no, they all fly back into the vortex), and everyone writhes, and a particularly disturbing scene of Martin Sheen apparently strangling Elaine's dog during his own spaz-moment, and then they're back in the present day, Pearl Harbor happened as history intended it, and a bunch of Admirals arrive to chew out Kirk Douglass for embarrassing them - “how can an aircraft carrier dissappear for a day, this is a disgrace, blah blah.”
Then in the next scene, which is clearly like just a few hours later, Kirk Douglass is smiling and says “I thought they'd never leave” or something to that effect, and sees off Martin Sheen wishing him luck with his “40 year old dog friend”, and they're all grinning, and I'm like...WHOAH, wait a minute! This isn't just a cute, “oh, we vanished, joke's on you” moment. Twelve marines have DIED! There is literally blood smearing the walls of the hallways in that scene! In addition, you have a Japanese corpse on your hand that has traveled forward in time, and how the hell are you going to explain that? Yet somehow the admiralty is ok with all of this? And Kirk Douglass is just smiling as if it's all just a funny day at the races? To his credit, Martin Sheen reminds him, “um, Commander Owens got left in the past,” and Kirk Douglass says, and I'm not making this up, “Oh, he had no family, don't worry about it.”
?!?!?!?!?!?
Oh well, I guess no one really does care about Redshirts. And all that fuel and munitions expended? Eh, Congress always approves limitless military budgets.
And finally, pastel guys appear in their limo again, and reveal their benefactor to Martin Sheen - oh ho ho, it's Commander Owens and Elaine, and now they're old and apparently the secret Illuminati masters of the military, and they invite him to come and learn all they know
”Yes, I have morphed into Joe Biden. Deal with it.”
Finally, just in case you simply couldn't get enough of it, the credits are filled with, yes, scenes of planes taking off and landing and flying all about.
So there you have it. I mean, how hard do you have to WORK to make a movie with a nuclear aircraft carrier and a squadron of wicked cool planes, and a TIME VORTEX, be completely and utterly boring?
It's like saying, here's a movie about a guy with a giant automatic chainsaw/axe/lightsaber that shoots other lightsabers out of its barrel, and there are also giant mutant rats in it, but nothing really happens?
I guess before the age of CGI, you had to actually use real planes (or doofy models) to stage a dogfight, but come on, Top Gun did it. Iron Eagles did it. Hell, the Empire Strikes Back came out that same year, and George Lucas somehow made a tennis shoe look like a star destroyer and we all bought it...these guys had a real live nuclear fucking AIRCRAFT CARRIER to play with. No damned excuse at all.
Oh, I can't leave without one more hair-tear, and that is the movie's title. What the hell? There is no countdown at all in this movie, let alone a final one. No one ever starts at a high number and moves down to a low one. Do you know any other definition of a countdown? If so, please tell me. Maybe “Martin Sheen chases a dog through an aircraft carrier” is an obscure definition I'm not aware of. Throughout the whole movie, no one even mentions the word "countdown."
This was a sad, sad waste of a great opportunity the crew had to film aboard a real, active aircraft carrier. According to Wikipedia, filming actually had to be cut short, because the real USS Nimitz was ordered to the Persian Gulf to rescue the crashed helicopter pilots from Ollie North's screwed-up mission to free the Iranian hostages.
Dude, they should have just shown the Iranian hostage-takers this movie. It would have had them begging for the Shah to be restored after the first 30 minutes, anything but this.
-SW
See, nothing short of demonic possession (and an atypical abundance of vacation-induced, wife-is-away, time to kill) could possibly have compelled me to seek out, rent, and watch the movie THE FINAL COUNTDOWN tonight. The sick thing is, I've had urges, embarrassing private urges, to watch this film for days, ever since I heard that great 80s song by Europe, “The Final Countdown” (which, much to my disappointment, appeared NOWHERE in the movie, although somehow I had been convinced it would), and a few neurons firing in a fit of nostalgia made me recall that this movie existed, with its premise of a modern (well, for the early 80s) aircraft carrier being hurled back in time to Pearl Harbor on the eve of the Japanese attack...and made me want to go watch it. Mainly because I really wanted to hear that song playing in the background while planes engaged in dogfights and all kinds of shit blew up.
Okay, Joey Tempest wrote the lyrics to this song, and the aircraft carrier in the movie gets sucked into a giant storm at sea that shoots them through time, so maybe that's the connection?
Well, I can't say that the universe didn't TRY to save me from my own stupidity. Neither Netflix, Comcast On-Demand, nor Amazon Unboxed had the movie available for instant watching. None of the local video stores (yes, a few still do exist) did either. I couldn't even find a pirate torrent of it. Finally, giving it one more shot today, I located it in the half-buried “VHS” section of a video store in Central Square, just a few feet away from the curtained-off porno area. The clerk was shocked, and said no one had taken this thing out for 8 years. This all should have given me some hints. But hey, the box said Kirk Douglass and Martin Sheen were in it. Surely such august personages wouldn't have leant their names to any old drivel, right?
”Sir, our orders say we're to rendezvous with some guy named Grignr, to seek out the Eye of Argon...”
So I dusted off my *V*C*R* (yes, children, the legends are true, such wonder machines really did exist), and thrilled to the sound of a squealing, protesting strip of celluloid tape that hadn't seen action since the first year of the Bush Administration reluctantly move until pictures appeared on my screen.
Now, normally this is where I would warn you about impending spoilers, but you know what, that word implies that there is something in the film to actually spoil. No one worries about “spoiling” ten day old Turkey leftovers, because they have already gone bad, nay, bypassed bad and pushed straight on to putrefying. So here we go.
The film is about 90 minutes long (emphasis on LONG), with easily 45 of those minutes taken up by military stock footage of planes taking off, planes landing, planes taking off, planes landing, ground crews rushing to get the planes ready for takeoff and landing, etc. Apparently this movie was actually made aboard the USS Nimitz, which is the aircraft carrier in the movie that makes the temporal journey.
Artist's rendition of THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE MOVIE.
The first 15 minutes or so involve Martin Sheen as a defense department efficiency expert being told by two mysterious men unapologetically wearing pastel blue suits that some mysterious benefactor wishes him well on this cruise. He is then flown by helicopter to the USS Nimitz in what seems like real time, with the chopper crew stopping briefly to mock a Russian fishing boat. I imagine that back in the good old Cold War this would have elicited much chuckling from the audience, although the racism that really shines through in this film is that vintage 1980s Japanophobia...but that comes a bit later.
Sheen's character is introduced to what seems like the whole f'ing crew of the Nimitz, only 2 or 3 of whom ever appear again or get a line. The communications crew makes fun of the Russians again. We are treated to many lengthy scenes of walking through the carrier's halls, and then our captain, Kirk Douglass, orders all planes to land, and yes, we get to see every g-d-mn plane land, in real time. It gave me trauma-flashbacks to the Nintendo game TOP GUN, where I'd survive super-deadly dogfights only to crash into the ocean every damned time I tried to land the plane on the fucking aircraft carrier, the one part of the game that apparently required you to actually BE a real live fighterpilot to complete.
THIS was the Japanese's REAL revenge for their defeat in the Pacific War...tormenting a generation of American kids!
Martin Sheen breaks into the room of the CAG, Commander Owens, who happens to be a Pearl Harbor history buff. Hmm, I wonder what relevance this might have later on?
Anyway, if you didn't catch the few bits of foreshadowing with some Native American weather officer named Black Cloud reporting on a weird storm (Get it? He's the WEATHER guy, and his name is BLACK CLOUD, and he's reporting on a STORM!), after endless plane landing scenes, culminating in “our newest pilot” (he merits no name, apparently) having trouble and being forced to make an emergency crashdown, a temporal storm appears. Captain Kirk Douglass orders his destroyer escort to turn back (I looked on some website which told me this is actually against regulations, since destroyers are needed especially during storms because that's when submarines, which are unaffected by weather, are most likely to attack)...then the temporal storm hits, and swirly blue lights make everyone on the ship writhe and pass out.
Ooh! Swirly!
They then get through the storm and “our newest pilot” crash lands, is dragged away by rescue crews, and is never mentioned in the movie ever again. What was the freaking point? No time to ponder - the crew soon makes discovery after discovery that convinces them that they've traveled back in time to Dec 6, 1941. Most of these discoveries involve sending out AWACs and F14 Tomcats to do reconnaissance, which means, yep, more takeoff, landing, and even a few refueling scenes. By this point I am beginning to think I have observed enough to actually be able to FLY a plane now.
Once the full impact of their discovery hits them, what follows is some of the worst acting I've ever seen, particularly from the first officer, the Token Black Guy in the Movie, who, basically delivers the lines “this can't be happening, my head is ringing, this is insane” as if he's reading monotone off cue cards, and then kind of vanishes from the movie.
The sad thing is, this actor was in Superfly. Seriously!
Meanwhile, we cut to a scene on a boat where a US Senator played by the same guy who voices Peter's religious father on FAMILY GUY is vacationing with his secretary, Katharine Ross...that's right, Elaine, from the Graduate. She's aged pretty damned well since the 1960s, although by the time she plays Donnie Darko's shrink in 2001 she's gone a good deal downhill. Despite this being 1941, they're all dressed pretty much in 80s fashion, and use 80s speech patterns.
A couple of Japanese Zeros strafe their boat and kill everyone except them and their dog (yes, their dog, Charlie), before Kirk Douglass orders two of his F-14s to intercept them. What follows is the ONLY ACTUAL DOGFIGHT SEQUENCE in the movie, and it's pretty sad - the F-14s do all kinds of crazy barrel rolls and nap-of-the-sea tricks before finally just blowing the Zeroes to pieces. Fuck history. So what if one of those Japanese guys would have gone on to father the guy who invented Hybrid cars? This was the 80s, and everyone was pissed because the Japanese were buying up half the country. The Nimitz crew members freely use the epithet "Jap" as if they were comfortable residents of 1941 and not enlightened visitors. Ah, the days before PC.
We never actually USED these planes in a war, but it's a good thing Reagan deficit-spent us into oblivion to build a zillion of them, 'cause if 50 year old antique planes ever attacked us, they would totally kick their balsa-wood asses. For our next trick, we'll get a Black Hawk helicopter to shoot down the Red Baron!
Anyhoo, they rescue Mr. Griffith and Elaine and the dog, and also one of the Japanese pilots, who they interrogate with their one Japanese American guy on board. Commander Owens (the Pearl Harbor buff) makes it clear he has the hots for Elaine. Then Japanese POW guy swipes a gun and kills like a dozen redshirts, takes Elaine hostage, and we are then treated to a PAINFUL hostage negotiation scene where everything Kirk Douglass says has to be translated into Japanese.
”Beeeeennnn! Save me from the Yellow Peril!”
Now, I speak enough Japanese to be able to tell that neither of the actors actually speaks it much better than I do. The actor playing the Japanese American officer has clearly memorized a sequence of words because he's saying them all with equal inflection, with no care to where sentences end and begin. The actor playing the Zero pilot has better Japanese, but basically just screams all his lines and waves his gun around menacingly like he's the boogeyman. He kills a few more marines.
Despite all this, Kirk Douglass remains entirely blase - at the most, a little annoyed - throughout the whole scene. I mean, come on! Captain Picard was an effete French archeologist, yet when Q started freezing his crew members he screamed “Get off my bridge!” Yet Kirk Douglass just kind of ambles about and gives into the pilot's demands to use a radio, but one of the marines finally takes him out, and that's that. The crew goes right on about their business from here on in, despite the fact that like a dozen people have been brutally slaughtered, and no mention of this is ever made again.
”No, seriously, I was in Inherit the Wind.”
I guess to lighten the mood after all of this, there is a baffling scene of Martin Sheen chasing Elaine's dog through the ship. Now hold on. This is a nuclear aircraft carrier, one at battle stations and red alert no less, and the crew just lets a freaking dog wander around? And no one tries to catch it, or pen it, or (G-d forbid) shoot it and throw it overboard? No, they just let it traipse all through the decks while the civilian on board (and isn't he supposed to be escorted everywhere? He is at the beginning, but that kind of gets forgotten as the movie goes on) chases it down.
Senator Mr. Griffith was apparently going to be President before history says he “vanished,” and throws his weight around, and demands to contact Pearl Harbor, which Kirk Douglass lets him do, inexplicably, after having ordered him quarantined earlier, but no one believes he's who he says he is. Mr. Griffith and Elaine are amazed at the technology on board, but interestingly neither comments on the seeming impossibility of the African American first officer, who in 1941 would still have had to serve in a segregated unit (Truman was the one who desegregated the army a few years later).
Meanwhile, Kirk Douglass decides that, since it's his job to defend the USA no matter what history says happens before or after, the Nimitz is going to take out the whole Japanese fleet. Oh shit, this means more planes are going to launch. Yup. Much launch footage later, Kirk Douglass gives in to Mr. Griffith's demands to be helicopter lifted back to Pearl Harbor, but has him dropped off on a random island instead, “to be safer.” But Mr. Griffith hijacks the helicopter with a gun, kicks Elaine and Owens off on the island and then gets into a scuffle, fires the gun once and...get ready for it...the helicopter explodes!!!!
Now, hold the fucking phone. How does one bullet, fired from within a helicopter, make it explode? I mean, are the cabins filled with 100% pure oxygen or something? Maybe they are, I don't know, but in this scene the bay doors are clearly open, so I'm thinking, no, it's the usual 75% nitrogen stuff we breathe every day, which tends NOT to explode when you fire a gun in it. It's not even a pressurized craft (remember, the bay doors are open), so a bullet is at worst going to punch a hole in the hull and provide extra ventilation, or maybe ricochet around and kill someone, but explode the whole copter?
This was the most amazing anal-rape of the laws of physics I have ever seen in a movie. I am just stunned. I mean, was he using depleted uranium bullets or something? WHAT THE HELL?
Even in OPERATION WOLF, when somehow your character could impossibly take down a helicopter with just a handgun, at least you had to shoot it like 50 times
So it's a good thing those Japanese Zeros didn't have handguns, or the whole USS Nimitz would be in danger. Anyway, Kirk Douglass is informed that the copter just “disappeared”, but he says there's no time to lose, he presses on with the attack....
In this vision of the 1980s, the Air Force apparently outsourced to the crew of the Black Pearl...yarr!
...when, all of a sudden, the time portal conveniently opens again, and actually CHASES the aircraft carrier when it tries to flee, and finally Kirk Douglass realizes He Can't Change History, and orders the planes back (which is stupid, because the portal is still far away and the pilots complain “we can see the bogies right now!”, so they totally could have taken out at least a good chunk of the Zeroes before leaving...but, no, they all fly back into the vortex), and everyone writhes, and a particularly disturbing scene of Martin Sheen apparently strangling Elaine's dog during his own spaz-moment, and then they're back in the present day, Pearl Harbor happened as history intended it, and a bunch of Admirals arrive to chew out Kirk Douglass for embarrassing them - “how can an aircraft carrier dissappear for a day, this is a disgrace, blah blah.”
Then in the next scene, which is clearly like just a few hours later, Kirk Douglass is smiling and says “I thought they'd never leave” or something to that effect, and sees off Martin Sheen wishing him luck with his “40 year old dog friend”, and they're all grinning, and I'm like...WHOAH, wait a minute! This isn't just a cute, “oh, we vanished, joke's on you” moment. Twelve marines have DIED! There is literally blood smearing the walls of the hallways in that scene! In addition, you have a Japanese corpse on your hand that has traveled forward in time, and how the hell are you going to explain that? Yet somehow the admiralty is ok with all of this? And Kirk Douglass is just smiling as if it's all just a funny day at the races? To his credit, Martin Sheen reminds him, “um, Commander Owens got left in the past,” and Kirk Douglass says, and I'm not making this up, “Oh, he had no family, don't worry about it.”
?!?!?!?!?!?
Oh well, I guess no one really does care about Redshirts. And all that fuel and munitions expended? Eh, Congress always approves limitless military budgets.
And finally, pastel guys appear in their limo again, and reveal their benefactor to Martin Sheen - oh ho ho, it's Commander Owens and Elaine, and now they're old and apparently the secret Illuminati masters of the military, and they invite him to come and learn all they know
”Yes, I have morphed into Joe Biden. Deal with it.”
Finally, just in case you simply couldn't get enough of it, the credits are filled with, yes, scenes of planes taking off and landing and flying all about.
So there you have it. I mean, how hard do you have to WORK to make a movie with a nuclear aircraft carrier and a squadron of wicked cool planes, and a TIME VORTEX, be completely and utterly boring?
It's like saying, here's a movie about a guy with a giant automatic chainsaw/axe/lightsaber that shoots other lightsabers out of its barrel, and there are also giant mutant rats in it, but nothing really happens?
I guess before the age of CGI, you had to actually use real planes (or doofy models) to stage a dogfight, but come on, Top Gun did it. Iron Eagles did it. Hell, the Empire Strikes Back came out that same year, and George Lucas somehow made a tennis shoe look like a star destroyer and we all bought it...these guys had a real live nuclear fucking AIRCRAFT CARRIER to play with. No damned excuse at all.
Oh, I can't leave without one more hair-tear, and that is the movie's title. What the hell? There is no countdown at all in this movie, let alone a final one. No one ever starts at a high number and moves down to a low one. Do you know any other definition of a countdown? If so, please tell me. Maybe “Martin Sheen chases a dog through an aircraft carrier” is an obscure definition I'm not aware of. Throughout the whole movie, no one even mentions the word "countdown."
This was a sad, sad waste of a great opportunity the crew had to film aboard a real, active aircraft carrier. According to Wikipedia, filming actually had to be cut short, because the real USS Nimitz was ordered to the Persian Gulf to rescue the crashed helicopter pilots from Ollie North's screwed-up mission to free the Iranian hostages.
Dude, they should have just shown the Iranian hostage-takers this movie. It would have had them begging for the Shah to be restored after the first 30 minutes, anything but this.
-SW