Drama,Action,Thriller,Science Fiction
United Kingdom,United States of America
Capricorn One is a 1978 American thriller film directed by Peter Hyams and starring Elliott Gould, James Brolin, Brenda Vaccaro, Sam Waterston, O. J. Simpson, Hal Holbrook, and Karen Black. The film's plot centers around a faked Mars landing and the consequences of the deception.
The film begins with NASA announcing that the mission to Mars has been canceled due to technical difficulties, leaving the American public disappointed and angry. NASA hopes to salvage the situation by staging a fake Mars landing in a studio on Earth. They enlist the help of three astronauts - Charles Brubaker (Brolin), Peter Willis (Waterston), and John Walker (Simpson) - to participate in the hoax. The astronauts are sworn to secrecy and sent on a fake mission to Mars.
The mission goes smoothly until the capsule is reported lost on re-entry. The astronauts are presumed dead, but in reality, they are still alive. They realize that they have become liabilities to the conspiracy and must go into hiding. Meanwhile, a persistent investigative reporter named Robert Caulfield (Gould) begins to uncover inconsistencies in the official story and becomes convinced that the Mars landing was faked.
Caulfield relentlessly pursues the truth, despite constant threats and intimidation from the government and other forces trying to keep the conspiracy hidden. Eventually, he convinces one of the astronauts, Brubaker, to come forward and reveal the truth about the fake Mars landing.
The film ends with the government acknowledging the hoax, and the astronauts being hailed as heroes for their bravery in going along with the deception to protect the reputation of the American space program. However, in the final scene, a shot of the (real) Mars is shown to imply that the space program may indeed continue to send astronauts to the planet.
