Marooned (1969)

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Three astronauts -- Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, and James Franciscus -- are sent into space for five months to measure the effects of extended stay. There occurs a measurable decline in their performance and Head of Manned Space, Gregory Peck, barks out, "Bring 'em down." Easier said than done. Their retrograde, rebarbative, reentry valves and pfoofnik pins won't fire, so they're stuck in orbit and running out of oxygen. They try everything. The problem can't be fixed.The launch of a rescue ship from Cape Canaveral is delayed because of a hurricane and it becomes clear that no matter what measures are taken, there's simply not enough oxygen for three men. With the inestimable aid of a nearby Russian space module and the seasonable arrival of the delayed rescue ship, two of them make it.The emphasis is as much on drama as on the technical events themselves, which are mostly rendered in a lingo unintelligible to the common man. There is the obligatory scene in which the three wives are called in to say good-bye to their doomed mates in space. The weakest of the three, Gene Hackman, goes berserk, which is not Hackman's forte.In some ways the most notable element of the plot is the help given by the Russian cosmonaut. It must be remembered that this is 1969, the height of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was an avowed enemy. It's good to see the comradeship between space explorers regardless of nationality clearly illustrated on film. Morever, the Russian guy is not a scowling, bald, sweating aardvark. The actor is perfectly normal and smiles as he feeds air to one of the men.The special effects are fine, although the drama inherent in such a situation isn't really effectively rendered. Not much acting is required of anyone. The musical score is apt -- one dreadful, ominous chord during scenes of danger.

I am old enough to remember the 1960s space program. It was a race to get to the moon by the end of the decade, a goal President Kennedy announced right here in Houston, at Rice University. I was still in high school but I remember it.I also remember how fascinated most of us ordinary citizens were with the early space program, not just the results but behind the scenes, how everything worked. This movie took advantage of that, not only telling the story of the stranded astronauts but showing us in fairly deliberate detail the conversations between mission control on the ground and the astronauts in space. For that reason it moves very slowly in places, and takes well over 2 hours running time. But had I seen this in 1969 the pace would have been just right.Gregory Peck gets top billing as Charles Keith, the head of the USA space program, the guy who makes the hard decisions, the man who talks directly with the President. When the 3 astronauts can't come back to Earth after 5 months docked with a space lab, he has the final say whether they will be abandoned or a very risky, untested rescue mission will be rushed into service. In the end he is guided by the President who tells him by phone they needed to save those guys.The 3 stranded astronauts are played by Richard Crenna as Jim Pruett, James Franciscus as Clayton Stone, and Gene Hackman as Buzz Lloyd. They are helpless. The idiot light on the dash board says the retro rockets have fired, but they haven't. They don't have a clue how to fix it, nor does Houston, and they only have a few days' oxygen left. David Janssen is Ted Dougherty one the mission control team, an astronaut himself, and he volunteers to pilot the untested reentry vehicle on the untested rocket to try to perform a rescue, all with a hurricane bearing down on Cape Kennedy. Fortunately the eye will pass over creating a window of calm air.Overall it is a very nicely done movie, it even spends quite an amount of time on the wives and their worry about their husbands. It gives a pretty good, though fictional, indication of what the inner workings of the space program was like back then.I saw it via the TV network 'Movies!'.

As a frequent user of the IMDb, I rarely write reviews but I feel compelled to put my 2 cents in on this one. I'm a science fiction fan, so I have seen and appreciated some very obscure works, yet I never heard of this movie. There is a big reason why... it's not good, it's not a classic, and that's why it's forgotten. First, I have to ask... why do people who rate movies like this a perfect 10 think anybody reads their reviews? You are stating this is the most superb piece of filmmaking art you have ever seen. Seriously? All you have proved is that whatever you have to say is totally worthless. This movie is from 1969, so it's important to look at it in context. They threw together a few big stars & capitalized on the two biggest fads of the era: space & The Cold War. This could have been a classic if it were a 30 minute Twilight Zone episode. It's over 2 hour runtime borders on painful. It represents Hollywood appealing to the nation's lowest common denominator by combining a fad with star power and little else. Obviously they are masters of exploiting public stupidity since there are still people tasteless enough to keep raving about this flick 40+ years later.Considered historically, it provides indisputable proof that the moon landing was 100% real, because not even Hollywood could fake it. It's award winning special effects make you wonder how the actors were able to keep a straight face while doing their zero G "acrobatics". Winning the Oscar has to be the Academy's version of dark humor considering the winner in its category the previous year was 2001: A Space Odyssey. The only reason this movie should be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick's masterpiece is to point out how it's the opposite of everything that makes 2001 a work of art. I respect the fact that many reviewers have a soft spot for this movie because they still look at it with child's eyes. I'm a little younger so my child nerd affection goes to movies like Space Camp. Yet even though I thought Space Camp was "wicked awesome" as a kid, I won't waste your time telling you it was a cinematic masterpiece. In fact Marooned can't even stand up to other Sci-fi disappointments with big potentials and poor execution, such as The Black Hole or Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Those two stinkers don't exactly set the bar very high either. Just like Marooned is no perfect 10, it's not the very worst movie in the world either. It's got big stars and its about the space race & that can go along way. Just not a 2 hours and 14 minutes long of a way. It's a bit sub par of average in the history of Hollywood. Watch it if you wish to relive a piece of your childhood or get a slice of what America was crazy about at the time. Just do NOT expect a grand story or an amazing cinematic experience & you won't be disappointed.

I love this movie! I own it and watch it every 1 - 2 yrs. I don't know the age group of some of the reviewers on here, but I notice several people mentioning Apollo 13, and the fact this movie was made prior to it. Does anyone remember Apollo 11? Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first people, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the Moon on July 20, 1969. I remember being very excited as a child, crowded around the TV with my family, watching the Apollo 11 landing. Marooned was released less than 5 months later, on December 11, 1969. Maybe when watching Marooned, one should set aside what had not yet happened, Apollo 13, and realize what had already occurred, Apollo 11.