Join or Sign In
Sign in to customize your TV listings
By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.
Overlong but interesting thriller in which Mission Control commander Holbrook discovers that the ship set to take the first astronauts to Mars (Brolin, Simpson, and Waterston), is unsafe. Rather than permit their failure to disappoint the public and lose the government's precious funds, Holbrook convinces the astronauts to fake the landing on a Hollywood-type soundstage. The deception works, but soon the astronauts realize that their lives are in danger (NASA will have to kill them while in "orbit" to ensure their silence), so they escape into the desert. Enter investigative reporter Gould, who pieces the conspiracy together. Unfortunately the premise sounds more interesting than it is. The film rambles at last to an exciting conclusion--in which Gould, in a crop duster piloted by eccentric Savalas, flies into the desert to rescue Brolin. Director Hyams, for some reason, insists on writing his own material, and other films he has directed (OUTLAND [1981] and 2010 [1984]) have suffered from his mediocre scripts.