Released many years before the absolutely terrible song by Swedish metal-lite band Europe, The Final Countdown is mostly famous for being one of the few science-fiction movies that jaded old men — particularly World War II vets — who typically only watch Westerns seemed to somewhat enjoy, as my father did whenever this came on television.
Still steel-jawed in 1980, Kirk Douglas is the tough-ish Navy captain of an aircraft carrier that, during regular maneuvers in the Hawaiian seas, appears to get sucked into an unexplained time vortex that takes the ship back to a few hours before the events of Pearl Harbor.
Between reasonably dealing with Department of Defense liaison Martin Sheen and needlessly arguing with chubby senator Charles Durning, Cap’n Douglas has to decide if he’s going to do something about Pearl Harbor or not while he’s got that burning number on the upcoming events.
What he does — or doesn’t do — leads to one of the most unsatisfying endings I’ve ever seen on film, subdued with a coda I’m sure we all saw coming.
As I watched this flick, directed by Don Taylor and surprisingly associate-produced by Troma head Lloyd Kaufman, I started to wish my dad was still alive — momentarily — so I could have asked him what exactly it was that he liked about this film, especially when he called Douglas an “ass” and Sheen a “communist” whenever they were brought up in everyday conversation.
Now that I think about it, he never said anything about James Farentino … maybe that’s the reason? —Louis Fowler