The Final Countdown (DVD)

== THE FINAL COUNTDOWN ==
=== 1980 ===

=== DVD ===
=== 2002 ===


=== THE STORY ===


The U.S.S. Nimitz, a nuclear aircraft carrier, encounters a very strange storm in 1981 and, when the ship clears the storm, the crew eventually realise that they have somehow been catapulted back to 1941. (As you do !!)

More importantly, they end up one day before the Japanese ...
...a lot of damage to the Japanese invasion force, possibly even destroy it.

So, the question becomes, "Should they?" Should they tamper with history and re-write it? They are United States military servicemen, in a combat situation, and most the crew says, "Go for it!" But, what of the ramifications?

That question becomes highlighted when a 1941 Japanese Zero blows up a 1941 private yacht, near the ... more

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

1980

DVD

=== 2002 ===

THE STORY

The U.S.S. Nimitz, a nuclear aircraft carrier, encounters a very strange storm in 1981 and, when the ship clears the storm, the crew eventually realise that they have somehow been catapulted back to 1941. (As you do !!)

More importantly, they end up one day before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, and they are near Pearl Harbour.

A fully-armed nuclear aircraft carrier, with a full complement of 1981 aircraft, right where it could do a lot of damage to the Japanese invasion force, possibly even destroy it.

So, the question becomes, "Should they?" Should they tamper with history and re-write it? They are United States military servicemen, in a combat situation, and most the crew says, "Go for it!" But, what of the ramifications?

That question becomes highlighted when a 1941 Japanese Zero blows up a 1941 private yacht, near the U.S.S. Nimitz, and the survivors are rescued by the 1981 Navy. Amongst those survivors is a powerful Senator, who could end up being Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President in 1944 (instead of Truman) and then succeed Roosevelt when he dies, thus changing politics from 1941 onwards.

CAST

The cast is impressive, with Kirk Douglas as the Captain of the Nimitz, Martin Sheen as a Department of Defense observer, Charles Durning as the arrogant, powerful, but basically ethical 1941 Senator Sam Chapman, Katharine Ross as Chapman's beautiful and intelligent assistant, and James Farentino as the Executive Officer of the Nimitz, who is also a history buff writing a book about the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

I thought that overall the acting was pretty bad considering the cast of Charles Durning, Kirk Douglas, and Martin Sheen, all of whom are certainly no strangers to the screen.

WHAT I THOUGHT

The footage of the aircraft was impressive, the plot twists were interesting, and I really enjoyed the small surprise at the end.

I wasn't very impressed by the special effects, especially the temporal storm episodes. They seemed cheap to me, even by the standards of when the film was made (1980). The script was weak at times, with Martin Sheen's dialogue sounding melodramatic, and the melodramatic effect was sometimes exacerbated by a musical score that sounded soap-opera-ish at times.

The story had tremendous potential and hopefully by the way, lets hope no one is stupid enough to do a remake. I wanted to really like the story along with the powerful cast of aircraft, but the story is so weak and silly that it just doesn't work at all.

DVD

The DTS encoding brings out the best in the musical score and the roar of the Jet engines, and the prop engines of the E3 Hawkeye, and the A6M Mitsubishi Zero aircraft.

The picture on the DVD is good quality, but not great quality with sharpness being very soft, and colorus at least natural and well saturated.

So to sum it up at least for me, this is a great collection of aircraft in action with an awful story and acting in it, served up in high quality "DTS" sound which in itself is interesting.

No extra features are on the DVD, just the trailer.

Format: PAL
Language English, Japanese
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Classification: PG
Studio: Hollywood DVD Ltd
DVD Release Date: 28 Jan 2002
Run Time: 99 minutes
ASIN: B00005NX0N

 

...less