jimc@haddock.UUCP (06/10/85)
From Leonard Maltin's *TV Movies* book (New York, Signet, 1984), here is a description: The Final Countdown (1980) -- Director: Don Taylor. Starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katherine Ross, James Farentino, Ron O'Neal, Charles Dunning. An aircraft carrier (the real-life *U.S.S. Nimitz*) enters a time-warp and finds itself in the Pacific just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Familiar but satisfying fantasy yarn; perfect TV fare. (end of quotation) Personally, I thought this one was entertaining and showed healthy production values, but not great. The most exasperating aspect of this film was its predictability; if the writers had worked just a little bit harder on making this something more than a 100-minute *Twilight Zone* episode, it could have been a classic. Still it does well. Kirk Douglas is his typical, stone-faced leading man, while Martin Sheen plays his usual role of an investigator who stumbles upon an adventure. The one scene I considered absolutely breathtaking is when pilots on a reconaissance mission in F-14's spy some Japanese Zeroes attacking a civilian ship, and then proceed to amaze their enemies and the audience in a demonstration of nuclear age technological prowess. Indeed, the implication of this movie is provocative; a single 1970's aircraft carrier could probably have taken on the entire fleet the Japanese used in the Second World War, and beaten them to shreds. Something to chew on. Jim Campbell ihnp4!ima!haddock!jimc