This is a thriller with a so-so premise about a conspiracy of a fake Mars landing.
The film used real NASA equipment in its sets and had the cooperation of NASA. It's actually rather thin on details of how they were going to get to Mars, and all the space equipment is just the moon landing stuff, but never mind.
It stars Elliot Gould as a reporter who accidentally finds out about the conspiracy from a friend who subsequently disappears, and survives various attempts on his life and liberty, including a fairly spectacular aerial chase.
Telly Savalas features as a crop duster pilot who helps Gould and the astronaut escape.
OJ Simpson is in the film in a minor role as one astronaut.
Karen Black also stars as a colleague of Elliot Gould, and the wife of the astronaut also puts in a great performance. Bosley from Charlie's Angels is also there as the irate boss of Gould, which is fun.
I dearly love this film and have watched it repeatedly because the performances are so good, especially Elliot Gould, Brolin, and Telly Savalas, and the aerial chase sequence is a corker. I know this film so well I can remember the "coke machine" sequence or the "eats the snake" sequence or "appears from the ground" or the "you're fired" sequence by heart.
The ending of the film is just perfect, no weary explanations of what has happened or tedious textual descriptions of what happened to the characters afterwards, it just finishes on a high.
One minor daft thing in the film which does annoy me is the way that it photographs the helicopters, as if they are unable to communicate by radio but have to turn to face each other in order to talk. Also it photographs them in a long shot as if they are right next to each other, for some reason, even though the rotor blades would hit each other if so, and incredibly noisy helicopters are portrayed as able to sneak right up on one of the astronaut characters at the top of a cliff, which he was silly to climb anyway. Anyway that's a minor quibble I suppose.
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