One of the satellites suffers damage and re-enters Earth's atmosphere unexpectedly: landing near a small Nevada town.
No good will come of this.
CW: Animal experimentation
An early technothriller this had a lot of 70s talent thrown at it. Robert Wise directs, Douglas Trumbull does effects and the design is magnificent but 70s as fuck.
The pacing is very uneven.
Recovery of the satellite from the town takes a long while, lingering on pictures of individuals dead in town. Then when they gather the scientific team an enormous amount of the runtime is dedicated to the decontamination procedures they go through before being allowed on 'Level 5' to study the contagion.
There is much exposition.
It's interesting for trying to show the scientific method with little two-fisted macho shenanigans.
Once they get to this it's all very nuclear age. Glove boxes, remote manipulators, teletypes, sliding doors and stainless steel.
As it nears the climax it all gets a bit handwavey and ends abruptly, almost being resolved in montage. Could we maybe have had a little less of the decontamination rigmarole? I think it's a 70s dramatic convention I've seen a bunch of movies of that era where once the end is in sight they just suddenly get it over with.
Overall it's tense in places but very long in an era of shorter movies.
Influential and classic but somewhat dated, 6/10