The Groundstar Conspiracy

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Audience Member More relevant now than ever before Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review delysid d i like this movie, although i find it confusing Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 05/17/20 Full Review Audience Member If you enjoy 70's conspiracy / paranoia / SciFi... (Andromeda Strain, Parallax View, etc) you will love this movie. I cannot believe it has not been remade. One of the greatest plot twists since Vertigo. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Audience Member The Groundstar Conspiracy is a peculiar hybrid of A-movie plot, effects and suspense and B-movie acting, music and occasionally editing. The story is intriguingly complicated (close to being far-fetched, but nevertheless): the twist and turns never cease to amaze the viewer. The same thing goes for the execution of the action scenes (great pyrotechnics during the opening scene) and the setting, with its fine locations (sci-fi-style research institute, villa near the beach, harbour area, helicopter views of the surroundings). All this together breathes quality and manages to secure and retain the viewer’s attention right till the end (where I was wrong-footed for one moment, until …). Unfortunately, some of the interesting action scenes are edited so tightly you’ve almost missed them while blinking your eyes. The crucial blast that sets off the whole affair is over before you realized what you’ve been looking at (mixing it with the opening credits doesn’t help either), similar to the scene in which the intruder in the clinic is pursued and killed (again, before you’ve even had the time to realize what has happened). There are some minor examples of such overhasty editing too (the accident in the ambulance, the capture of Welles’ (Michael Sarrazin) kidnappers preceded by Welles’ escape). Another nagging point is the music used in this film: true, it is varied, but some of it is somewhat exaggerated and cheap because of that. This is true to some point of the music used during the romantic interlude between Welles and Nicole (Christine Belford), but mainly of the odd sci-fi music including beeping sounds etc. It tends to draw too much undeserved attention to itself, making the events on the screen seem less serious than they are (I remember similar music being used in The Anderson Tapes). A last critical remark I would like to make is about the style of acting. It appeared to me (especially in the beginning) that the actors tended to sort of rattle off their lines, without making it sound all too convincing. Towards the end, this seemed to improve. Perhaps I just had to get used to them (Peppard is a very good actor, after all). As to the scenes between Welles and Nicole, I had some initial doubts too: I felt she confided in a total stranger far too easily. This seeming rather unrealistic, I drew up the theory she was part of some sort of a setup. When it turned out she was not, I began to appreciate her relevance to the plot anyway, considering she was the one who helped Welles on the way to recover his memory. The Groundstar Conspiracy is an amusing suspense thriller with some flaws, but it is definitely entertaining enough to please the viewer. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Groundstar Conspiracy

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