For some reason I like this movie, and watched it a few times. But it seems the more I watch it, the more confused I get? And hard not to give a ton of spoilers in doing so. But as a movie to how bad can invasion of privacy and monitoring by the American government can get, I'd say this was well ahead of its time! Peppard is overly cocky and confident as the chief investigator to this mass explosion that destroys a secret underground lab near a wilderness community among the Rockies. He seems the one to 'police the police', and is unrelenting in letting other officials and authorities stick their nose into his investigation. The lone survivor believed to be the saboteur appears at this woman's cottage(?) badly injured with his face burned off. He's taken to an elaborate facility and stitched back together (revealing Sarrazin) But he can't remember anything? He's constantly grilled why he went to that woman's place after the explosion, and is she a conspirator too? He honestly doesn't know, other than he was looking for help. And why would she call the police on him then? Peppard is still leery of the two, and lets Sarrazin think he's escaped after a hospital transfer gets thwarted. Sarrazin makes his way secretly back to the woman's house knowing she's under surveillance still. But convinces her to hear him out that he's totally amnesiac and doesn't believe he is in any way part of a conspiracy to destroy this secret base. She believes him, and takes pity on him to help regain some of his memory, all while trying to seemingly elude Peppard and his recapture of Sarrazin. The 'whos' and 'whys' and 'whats' start to get pretty muddled as to the purpose of this base, who was going to benefit from its secrets, and who allowed such a rouge element into the project to begin with? So again, without giving spoilers away, the movie veers onto all these different courses, and Saarazin and the woman may not be such a threat after all? But the chilling part is in how they were used in the whole scheme of things. Rightfully or wrongly? That's the chilling, and somewhat hard to accept ending to it all. Dare I compare it to Paul Bartel's nutty 'Not For Publication' movie - but it almost follows the same threads. Crime, conspiracy, and political righteousness all get tangled up in this ball of wax. And by the end when you think there's going to be some hardcore justice and the 'good guys win' it doesn't exactly turn out that way. There's resolve - but is it truly ethical? I'd say both movies have good intent, weave an intriguing mystery, but gets lost in its cloak & dagger business by getting overly complex and non-explanatory, or just downright silly and hard to believe. Yet as we all know well now, fact can usually be stranger than fiction. Is 'justice' and true closure ALWAYS needed?
Review of The Groundstar Conspiracy
