This seems like a movie that got way too much hype initially (it won an Oscar for special effects) and then fell quickly into disrepute as payback. It gets a lot of slagging nowadays as a piece of crap but frankly, it's not bad! Looking like it's leaping from a Sears Roebuck catalogue, what with all the primary colours and (by today's standards) cheap looking effects, it's a straightforward story of three astronauts whose rocket malfunctions on the way back from a space station stint. They have 42 hours of oxygen and no booster rockets - WHAT WILL NASA DO? Gregory Peck plays an emotionless physicist who doesn't see the logic in a rescue attempt and Gene Hackman is, as per usual, awesome. A kind of rigid stoicism (parading as seriousness) that flows through this film makes it a little ridiculous. The completely gorgeous Mariette Hartley is an automaton astronaut wife who tells the other automaton astronaut wives that the best remedy to the impending death of their husbands by slow suffocation is: c'mon gals, turn off your emotions! There's a also little too many lingering shots of rinkydink model ships. Oh, but taking a drink whenever one of the NASA eggheads says, "the numbers" would be a great way to further enjoy this one.
"Do not erase"!
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