Overrated

Great Film overall

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

At the time of my review, the other reviews are all either raves or pans. Mine is somewhat between.This Russian style movie doesn't translate too well, but the communication problem looks to be more sever than that. It's about six astronauts on a doomed mission. One dies in space in an accident, leaving another with guilty feeling flashbacks during the return trip.The return trip also goes badly, as the remaining five are stranded in the desert. This is before cell phones, internet, all that jazz, and no one knows they are there. Sort of like the Twilight Zone episode.The movie is more or less about the breakdown of these professionals in the wild.That had promise. However, it looked very slipshod in editing, and we aren't sure what happens to a couple of characters in a very bizarre, disoriented chain of events. One problem is that we only get a point of view of three of the characters, yet one of the other two becomes a mutineer.This could have been a good film, on the order of SILENT RUNNING or ROBINSON CURSOE ON MARS, but it is too disjointed, and it can't be blamed on budget, because the fact is that the plot and events are left with gaping holes that could be rectified without any budget at all.It isn't as great as some say, nor as bad as some say. In an evaluation to give a person an idea of what to expect, I can say that although it is not action oriented, it does flow fairly well, with enough drama and suspense, enough scenery and atmosphere, to cover for lack of action itself. The monotone style of speaking of the characters may be because of dubbing, but I think it is intentional for effect. I've been more bored by many high octane action movies, but also more entertained by less action. It falls somewhere in between.On the plus side, it sticks with you. After many years, I still find much of it very impressionable, and memorable, for good or bad.It should have been better, but it won't disappoint completely. I think it is a movie that bears watching.

Although this t.v. movie was made around the same time as Star Wars, it has nothing of a space opera. Rainer Erler is more interested in the inner space of his characters. Five astronauts return to earth after more than four years on a catastrophically failed mission to Ganymede during which 21 of their team perished. When no one answers their calls, they perform an emergency landing in the ocean and finally get to a rocky desert coast that looks much like a strange planet. While they did find some evidence of life on Ganymede, they have a hard time doing so on Earth, until they surmise that the human race must have destroyed itself in a nuclear war. Their despair over the apparent utter futility of all that they have endured leads them to madness, murder and cannibalism.Some of the effects shots betray the movie's low budget (in terms of money as well as time, it seems), e.g. when in a supposedly zero gravity scene you can see that one of the characters is actually hanging from the ceiling in his seat because his hair is standing up straight. Other scenes seem to have been shot in a real zero gravity environment.Apart from looking cheap in some and dated in all places, this movie has many defects, not the least of which is the utterly unsuitable score. I still give it a high mark because it succeeds in creating an apocalyptic atmosphere and depicting people's emotional reactions to it better than many other movies I have seen.An intriguing presence in the movie is a beautiful girl that keeps appearing to one of the characters in his daydreams or hallucinations. She is played by Vicky Roskilly, an actress who seems to have made this one movie only and then disappeared from the face of the earth, at least as far as any traces of her on the internet are concerned. I hope she is alive and well.

I always looked at this as a sort of Vietnam parable. The astronauts (before they return to Earth) have nothing but high hopes and delusions of grandeur. They dream of a warm reception and massive parades for the conquering heroes. However, nothing is further from the truth, as the Astronauts return to a world where they are not only forgotten, but unwelcome. The bleak atmosphere of this movie is truly astonishing. I love the scenes where the astronauts wander around in the desert while the main character Don has frequent flashbacks to spacecamp and an extended sequence on the surface of Ganymede where two of his fellow explorers die tragic deaths. While the cinematography and editing are pretty crude, there are some pretty good ideas and tricks used by this extremely low budget movie. Although the acting does get over the top at times, it's never too silly to keep from enjoying the seriousness of the movie, which in the end is more of a thinker than a downer. I love the ending in that it raises some really good questions while the movie could have ended at any point earlier on.Watch as a curiosity item, at least to see Jurgen Prochnow in a very pre-Das Boot supporting role.

The storyline is 3 ships travel to Ganymede (moon of Jupiter); about 18 people go, about 4 come back. Don is mentally unstable since he was felt responsible for the deaths of 2 crew members that went to collect samples of organic compounds for him (proving life was on Ganymede). About 1/3 of the movie is in space returning to Earth, 1/3 flash back to Ganymede, and 1/3 hiking through the desert when they force on a landing on (what may/may-not be) Earth after they aren't met when they return to Earth's orbit. The dubbing was one of those classic "ha! you are a crazy person, yes a crazy person, and I say that without malice, I do, it's just that you are a crazy person." who's responsible for that dubbing? Some of the on-Ganymede effects were well done, but in general it seemed like the cinematography was done as a high-school drama project. 10 minutes spent with the camera trained on someone rapelling down some rocks. At the end, you really don't have a clue what it was all about. Was Don crazy? Were they on Earth? Did Earth still exist? Were they in Mexico? Did 14 really die on Ganymede? Why did no one meet them on their return? And considering they were out of water all the time, how did they keep getting more?