Say one thing for "Countdown."… It makes the moon seem just as dull as Mother Earth.

[It] is simply stultifying. The bulk of it is a slack, cliché-ridden prelude to the climactic space ride, as we see the conditioning of three astronauts at a simulated Cape Kennedy. The lads bound home to their worried wives. "Hey there, give us a smile," is a sample of the dialogue. Finally, one of the men buckles in and roars aloft, thanks to some documentary footage, as the music rumbles ominously and the rest of the cast hang around a winking control board.

By then slow death has already set in, since Robert Altman's direction is almost as listless as the acting of a dreary cast.

Howard Thompson, "'Countdown'," in The New York Times (© 1968 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 2, 1968, p. 57.