The Final Countdown

Ever since the decline of traditional studio home video departments, niche companies like Blue Underground have cultivated their own fanbases built around consumers’ tastes.  It’s a symbiotic relationship based upon the idea that these films are in the hands of people who actually love the films they’re releasing.  And in BU’s case, there’s probably no better example of that than The Final Countdown (1980) which (if memory serves) was the company’s flagship release on the Blu-ray format and now comes early in their UHD upgrade agenda.

Kirk Douglas gets top billing as the skipper of the USS Nimitz, a tricked out Naval aircraft carrier that gets sucked into a time warp and whisked back to April 6th, 1941…”A day that will live in infamy.”  So now the million-dollar-question is, does the crew take advantage of their superior firepower to wipe out the Japanese attack force and save Pearl Harbor…or should history be allowed to go along its merry way?  

 

Trouble is, other than a well-orchestrated run-in between a couple of F-16s and some Japanese Zeros, all the film does is talk about its time traveling conundrum.  A low-budget affair that makes the most of its all-access pass aboard the Nimitz, it often seems as if the story was written around whatever found footage was handy, although, as the extras point out, quite a bit was actually gathered just for the film itself.  There are monumental shots of state of the art Navy gear circa 1980 and the time-travel sequence is particularly impressive, drawing you into the time-travel wormhole with a disorienting amount of detail.  But the movie itself, for all its potential, never achieves five-star status.

 

But the beauty of BU’s 4K Ultra-HD release is The Final Countdown has now achieved a level of visual perfection that’s puts it in the top 1% of all home viewing experiences.   Not only that, but the 3-Disc limited edition includes a CD soundtrack, Blu-ray copy, collectible booklet and flashy lenticular slipcover.  Extras include a refreshingly candid retrospective from associate producer Lloyd Kaufman (of Troma Pictures), interviews with the pilots who appeared in the film, trailers, TV spots and a rather dry commentary from DP Victor J. Kemper.  

 

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