(Ron O’Neal plays the XO aboard the Nimitz and starts yelling as unconvincingly as I think I’ve ever heard anyone yell.) There’s even more waste than just the stable of actors, because this movie has a fabulous premise that gets junked early on.
Kirk Douglas rubs his chin and looks confused Martin Sheen’s Lasky is useful because he knows where Owens (Farentino) kept the draft of his textbook Durning is cranky and doomed Ross worries about a dog. Even though there are some good actors in here-Douglas, Sheen, Charles Durning, Katharine Ross-there’s not much for them to do. Unfortunately, movies with plots don’t often work when the most interesting parts elide the people or anthropomorthized bunnies or whatever it is that carries said plot, and The Final Countdown is in a hell of boredom. Ditto for people who have a technological attraction (or a historical one, at this point) for these sort of displays. For people so inclined to be moved by depictions of American military strength, certainly this works. Just about everything manages to finagle a little time to go airborne, and when the rogue lightning storm which transports the Nimitz through time appears to keep it from fighting Pearl Harbor, it takes back a squadron of fighters in midair and arrayed for combat. An E-2 does reconnaisance work an A-3 modified for aerial refueling comes on out to fill up the thirsty Tomcats. An Officer and a Gentleman hardly makes the process of joining the Navy seem fun, but it also promises a life that’s exciting and bold mostly from the point of view of the Puget Sound Debs who court them Top Gun doesn’t really need any explanation even The Right Stuff has the immortal line, “They call them ‘aviators’ in the Navy – they say they’re better than pilots!” A surprisingly large chunk of The Final Countdown is watching planes land and take off, and aside from those F-14s, we see A-6s and A-7s come off the flightdeck. Not only does it focus primarily on the officers rather than the grunts, but it also sets the tone for the glamour of naval aviators that would become de rigueur in the rest of the decade. Navy than those smarmy “Global Force for Good” ads. The Final Countdown is a better commercial for the U.S.
In the same way that watching Buster Keaton plunk logs off train tracks while balancing precariously on the moving train’s cowcatcher is harrowing, so is watching a very real jet come close to obliterating itself in the ocean. In 1980, I’m sure it was probably just as fun to watch, but almost forty years later the retro quality of a movie which uses the real thing instead of a CGI version of it-or, perhaps, doesn’t allow us to wonder if that very real thing flying around might in fact be very good CGI-is welcome. Around the 6:15 mark, one of the F-14s makes a dive toward the ocean and pulls out of it mere feet above the surface of the water, which is an absolute thrill. Above all, it’s a remarkable display of camerawork to smoothly capture flight. And we can appreciate the American pilots’ nationalist fervor, I think, in shooting down the Zeros that their fathers may have taken aim at themselves. We can appreciate the Japanese pilots’ hearts falling into their stomachs when they see a plane which may as well be a flying saucer for all its advantages. An F-14 is almost seven times longer than a Zero, has a wingspan five times longer, weighs ten times more. Apart from the technical superiority of an F-14, what stands out about this scene is how much bigger a Tomcat is than a Zero. But what stands out in this sequence is the wonderful cognitive dissonance of the visuals as opposed to anything dealing with plot or, less than that, character. After fooling around a little, they take fire from the Zeros, and only then does Yelland (Douglas) give the order for his F-14s to “splash” the enemy they do it quickly and efficiently. They are hamstrung by the commands from the USS Nimitz, but when they see that the Zeros are after the survivors as well, the Tomcats fly in and run interference for the survivors in the water. While this has been going on, two F-14s from 1980 observe it from a distance.
Their mission is to destroy anything which might carry a radio able to report on the presence of the Japanese military this close to American territory, and after sizing up the yacht, the Zeros destroy it. senator, his secretary, a friend, some crew, and a mercifully invulnerable dog is spotted by a pair of Zeros running an armed reconaissance for the fleet behind it. A yacht out on a pleasure cruise, carrying a U.S.