***Since this movie was released in 1980, there will be spoilers.***
On Friday night, I was looking for something to watch and started flipping through the movies on Amazon Prime. I was about to give up, when I saw The Final Countdown. I'd seen this movie on television years ago and I knew it involved time travel, so I was in.
The movie stars Kirk Douglas as the captain of an aircraft carrier, Martin Sheen as an efficiency expert from the Defense Department, James Farentino as the air group commander, Charles Durning as a US Senator, and Kathleen Ross as his secretary.
The aircraft carrier is out near Hawaii on maneuvers when it encounters a strange storm. When it clears, the ship is undamaged, but the radio broadcasts are strange. They sound as if they're pre World War II. When a plane come backs with recon photos showing Pearl Harbor as it looked on Dec 6, 1941 and ships that have been long destroyed are sitting there, they begin to contemplate time travel.
This movie is seriously not the best ever made. It's cheesy in spots, and I'm sure it was cheesy even in 1980. Something about it, though, is extremely entertaining and I was engrossed for the length of the film.
There are issues. Oh, so many issues. None of the characters are really fleshed out, maybe because there are so many of them, and there's never a reason given for the time travel. The captain had sent out his ship's airplanes to attack the Japanese on their way to attack Pearl Harbor, but the storm reappears and they're forced to abort. And they're returned to 1980 with nothing have happened to be a compelling reason this ship was transported. I wanted a why!
Despite the problems, I enjoyed this movie a lot. I started to wonder if maybe the script originally had an explanation for the time travel and it was cut from the film version. So I did an online search. And discovered I'd have to pay for the script. No. I guess I'm going to have to live with the questions.
I guess ultimately despite the deficiencies, the idea of a film is to entertain the audience. I was entertained. Recommended.
