IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 51 minutes, rated 7.2 by 5708 cinematizens.
Genre: Docudrama.
Verdict: Wow!
During the Cold War in 1985 with Ronald Reagan in the White House and Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin, the Soviet space station Salyut 7 (S7) went haywire. During a period when it was unoccupied, S7 lost flight integrity and began to spin on all three axes in a way that threatened a crash on earth. There was no way to control it from the ground.
Time to send in the flyboys. Their mission is to fix it or destroy it. A crash would be terrible but even worse would be a capture of the space station by the irritating and tiresome Americans. If they used a space shuttle with a Canadarm to grab the station, then they would have all the latest Red technology on board, coffee cups, screw drivers, burned out oxygen canisters, pinup pics of Comrade of the month, and so on.
There are the complications, of course. One of the flyboys was grounded but the engineer chosen for the assignment wants him back. Why, we never find out. That he was grounded is the start of the film, and let’s just say it reminded me of something John Glenn once said, and wisely never repeated. But it means that this flyboy is not high on the short list of those trusted. The Ground Control commissar (Cap Con in NASA-speak) has to fend off military and political pressures which mount up.
The two have a deadline to meet, which was set both by the erratic orbit of S7 and the American salvage hunt. To add spice, each has a crisis of sorts in his personal life. Whew, what a lot of competing story lines.
Off they go!
This is one of the arresting visuals as the rocket ship pierces the clouds and leaves earth.
It is the usual management squeeze: they are told to use their initiative but to obey orders. They are told to use their own judgement but wait for directions from Cap-Con. The McKinsey management manual has a Russian edition.
Anyone crazy enough to go on this mission has to be crazy enough to see it through and they do, not always obeying orders and not always waiting for instructions. They see the job and do it.
Nits to pick there are a few. If the Red Tech is so hot how come earlier they let that French astronaut on board and then let him go to work for the Americans. Hasn’t he already told all. Most Frenchmen do. This Frenchie is mentioned early on and then forgotten, though not by this correspondent.
The international irresponsible media makes much of the problem, but all examples of this perfidy we see come from beyond the Soviet sphere. Inside Russia no one knows what is going on or so it seems.
Wow! The special effects are very special. According to the film publicity about twenty minute of screen time came from S7 in space. Fabulous. Another forty minutes came from cosmonaut training. Verisimilitude is high. The travelling mattes for the space photography are glorious. Far too few space film have anything of the grandeur and emptiness of space in them, but this one does.
The gorgeous photography brought to mind ‘Gravity’ (2013) but this film had a story, whereas ‘Gravity’ had only Sandra Bullock taking her clothes off, repeatedly. The fraternity brothers rated is 6 out of 5. (That’s their idea of wit.)
The exploits of the cosmonauts are there, but played in a low key, and the better for it. The emphasis is always on doing the job, and how hard it is with all those laws of physics. This is what has to be done. Do it.
I also like the distribution of heroism between the two flyboys and the Cap-Con on the ground. They each had a role in making it happen. And nothing is soft-soaped.
What is not to like is the role of women. The only woman in action we see is there to be rescued from herself in the opening. Thereafter the only women we see are the wives, who are treated condescendingly by everyone. There is an MD at Ground Control who is constantly ignored and patronised. No doubt realistic, but rankling all the same. Marie Windsor would not have put up with that. See the discussion of ‘Cat-Women of the Moon’ (1953) elsewhere on this blog for edification.
I expect the film is no more realistic than ‘Apollo 13’ but it is great entertainment. But with all those competing storylines something had to give, and some of the elements are lost in the shuffle. It should have been cut to 90 minutes as the laws of physics demand. In this case, the physics of me sitting still and reading subtitles.
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