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Skyjacked!
Hijack victims drink for free -or- Slap your hair into fabulousness!
1972
Review: January 30, 2010
Director: John Guillerman
Starring: Charleton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Walter Pidgeon
You betcha!
THE SETUP:
Plane is hijacked. Drama ensues.
DISCUSSION:
Jury duty! That’s where I am. And actually I don’t mind, it gives me lots of time to catch up on my writing and reading. It’s also occasion for observance of a real cross-section of New Yorkers, and to reflect anew that one of the ways of coping with living amongst eight million others is either to develop a belief that YOU are the special case, the rules everyone else must follow don’t apply to YOU, or alternately to develop the sense that you are just another egg in the carton and don’t matter to anyone at all. On a separate topic, I wish I would include a vignette from the short film we were shown as jury duty orientation, which took place during puritan times and included grim people in bad robes tossing someone in the water to see if he’d float. Oh, one other thing? This is my second experience at Jury Duty in New York and I must confirm that the old codgers who run the jury room and have to deliver the same speeches day in and out are truly some of the best, most nimble comedians in New York.
Anyway, Skyjacked! The exclamation point is mine, but I feel it’s necessary. Someone recommended this to me, and you know, a disaster movie is never unwelcome. We also see that this stars Charleton Heston—who was like all-disaster, all-the-time for a while there, and is directed by John Guillerman, of The Towering Inferno, Sheena, the 70s remake of King Kong, and its sequel, King Kong Lives [WHY have I not seen King Kong Lives?]. So the film begins with big-ass plane landing—they successfully make the plane seem huge—and Heston as Hank [a MAN’S name!] walks along the tarmac, and the first thing we find out is that he is the one person with the keen eye to spot a slight flaw in an airplane that everyone else okayed as fine. Yvette Mimieux plays his ex-wife, Angie, who is now boffing co-pilot Sam, a plot twist ripped straight out of the original Airport. In here there’s a little airport drama and introduction of characters [really just sights of characters, we don’t have the usually character-setting vignettes of most disaster films], plus a LOT of zooms into and out of a lipstick case. This turns out to mean something later, but for now will have you asking yourself “WHAT is up with the lipstick?”
So blah, blah, they all get on board, including a senator, and a black cellist. There’s also this Army dude, Weber, who wants on at the last minute. The cellist, who buys an extra ticket for his cello so it doesn’t have to go in storage, gives up his seat to Weber and… puts the cello in storage? Not without a full refund, is what I’d say, but I think he is admirably trying to improve race relations by example. You’ll see how he is rewarded for his trouble. The question comes down to Captain Hank, who approves Weber coming aboard. Oooh, the irony, since Weber turns out to be the psycho. By the way, the first thing Hank does when taking the captain’s chair is light up his pipe—can you imagine? I know, it was a different time, but airlines have been smoke-free for so long now it’s hard to imagine a time when being trapped in an enclosed environment with a smoker would be perfectly okay. Weber also smokes in his seat. Nightmare! Okay, I will begrudgingly admit that maybe not EVERYTHING about the 70s was better.
Anyway, when Susan Dey [in her first role] as Elly Brewster appears dressed like a flower child, they assume naturally she’s in coach, but no, she’s first-class. Soon after takeoff, Elly finds SOMETHING written on the bathroom mirror in—LIPSTICK! So THAT’S what it was all about. The movie successfully raises suspense by not letting us know what’s written there for a while. When we finally do find out, though, turns out to be the same boring claptrap about terrorism this, bomb on plane that. Nothing about sucking cocks, the usual topic of bathroom postings. Anyway, they think Elly did it! Which is precious, as she’s, well, she’s Susan Dey dressed as a flower child. Maybe it’s a plea for attention? Hank comes out and tells her to go back to her seat and pretend like nothing’s going on.
Lots of urgent nothing happens for a while: they ask the senator if this could be about him, and he is fairly belligerent about how they could whip this whole bomb-on-plane situation into shape if they were competent. There is the contractually-required pregnant lady on the plane. Weber is getting more and more drunk. Young clean-cut Brolin is very much like Christian Bale. Angie is having several small moments where the pressure is just GETTING to her, and she struggles to retain her emotional composure! I’ll bet we’re going to find out she’s pregnant. In here the bomber has time to spend roughly 10 minutes in the bathroom composing a new note in lipstick… the plane staff doesn’t think they should be watching the bathrooms? Guess not.
Once they get the note, they decide they should divert to Anchorage, as the bomber wants. I need hardly inform you that Anchorage is experiencing the storm of the century. Hank gets on the intercom and flat-out tells the passengers they’ve got a bomb threat, which I thought was admirably transparent. He also informs them that drinks are on the house. That’s the spirit—drink your terrorist troubles away. Angie is having another emotional moment when Sam shows up and says “Don’t worry—it puts lines in your face.” This is just one of the many ways in which we know that Sam is wrong for Angie and she’ll be dumping him [or more likely he’ll die] later. Another way we know is the flashback Angie has to blissful times with Hank, him pushing her on a playground swing, them declaring love for each other. Don’t you just love the 70s? So pure and natural.
So the cellist divulges his suspicions about Weber as they’re about to land in Anchorage in zero visibility. Then—rednecks on a plane! There’s a small plane with two hunters [deer corpse in back] whose radio is out, and are planning on making an unscheduled landing at Anchorage. For a while it’s whip-pan-o-rama as Guillerman unzips his arsenal to create tension, and the airliner has to execute a sudden roll to avoid the small plane [triggering typical disaster-movie shots of passengers screaming]. After much tension, they land in zero visibility. I thought it would have been hot if the small plane came in behind them and almost hit them on the runway, but no, we just forget the small plane… it was just a distraction. Meanwhile, Weber is having flashbacks of being decorated as a war hero, lots of ironic American flags hanging to left and right.
SPOILERS > > >
So Weber sees the police gathering outside and freaks, finally announcing himself as the bomber, arming the bomb and demanding to refuel and take off again—for MOSCOW. In here he hauls off and smacks Angie and her hair flies out—into FABULOUSNESS. See below, it’s all perfectly windswept and glamorous. It occurred to me then that boys who grew up in the 70s learned the warped lesson that when you abuse women, they start looking AMAZING. Get bitch-slapped into fabulousness! Easy domestic abuse makeovers in minutes!
So Angie goes back and starts to let passengers off the plane without Weber’s knowledge—although they’re all making such a ruckus it’s a wonder he simply doesn’t hear. The pregnant woman is, of course, TOO pregnant to go down the chute. She’s also having contractions. Yeah, it’s probably better to eschew that nice comfy slide-ride and immediate medical care in Anchorage in favor of having your baby on the plane and finally getting medical care in FUCKING MOSCOW. Right? Mothers just intuitively know what’s best. Although really it’s just because a baby MUST be delivered on that plane. In here also is Leslie Uggams as a stewardess, who gets off the plane, but not before telling Weber “Screw you,” which I suspect is here to let us know that she is a sassy, defiant African-American sister who will not be cowed. Although she IS cowed, she just makes a sassy comment on the way out—so the whole concept of impotence is simultaneously built in to her defiance. If you note these extremely common moments in movies, it’s usually the same thing: Blacks are sassy and defiant, but ultimately powerless.
So while the passengers are getting off [love the conceit that somehow the senator was NOT the first one off the plane and remains aboard], a white van drives by, flashes of light emanating from it. Weber freaks, and starts shooting at the van [killing one photographer] while Hank says “It’s just photographers. It’s nothing!” which struck me as a bit odd… that’s it’s just expected that of course there would be a press contingent, summoned and organized with about the same urgency they assembled the anti-bomb crew, driving by on a special photo-taking cruise, and this should be treated as such routine it’s “nothing.” You’ll notice that Weber spends plenty time hanging out the open door with his back to Hank and company, giving them ample time to literally kick him out, and Sam is up in the cockpit with the unattended bomb, affording him long minutes to toss it out the window if he so chose. He doesn’t. Then Weber orders them back in the air and they’re on to Moscow. You’ll note that the zero-visibility, storm of the century doesn’t give them the slightest problem when taking off.
Now, did I mention that some sort of secret agent was loaded into the cargo bay while they were in Anchorage? Weber finds them trying to bring him up, and pistol-whips Heston for the transgression. This is that required moment in every Charleton Heston movie where he gets beaten down, but it just makes him rise up and say, as he does here: “Nobody dies on my airplane—not even you, you son of a bitch!” Then they bring up the frozen guy from below and throw him in a seat to defrost. And THEN—the airliner flies above the clouds, and the music SOARS [the ostentatious score is by someone named Perry Botkin, Jr.] and Hank stares out at the miracles of God’s creation and his heart takes flight! You see, you have to stop and appreciate life’s simple pleasures, even when you’re SKYJACKED.
This reverie causes Hank to have another flashback, where he sees himself with his tearful wife next to a river or something, and tells her that he wants to be with her and the kids, and is going to give up Angie, that strumpet of the skies. So THIS is what their interpersonal drama is all about. And I’ll let you know right now that Angie doesn’t turn out to be pregnant, either, thus invalidating the lyrics I had composed to my imaginary love theme for this movie, “(They Can’t) Skyjack Our Love,” which went “Yvette Mimieux was eatin’ for deux…”
Speaking of babies, however, it’s time for the pregnant lady to deliver on the plane. This is best accomplished as the jetliner flies into Russian airspace and the Russkies launch jets that buzz them repeatedly [i.e. REPEATEDLY]. Of course you know that no one can give birth during the 70s without someone there yelling “Damn you, PUSH!” The baby comes out fine. Then Heston gets on the line to the Russkies and says “We are an American airliner. We are being hijacked.” Good thing the Russkies brought someone who can understand English! And I do believe he meant to say they’re being SKYjacked. Anyway, after some supposedly tense moments, the Russians let them land.
In here the frozen agent returns to life and it turns out he’s: TONY MANERO! No, it’s not, but he’s in the mold in a black jacket over a white silk shirt, and hair as large as the day is long. Disco secret agent! I can dig it. Then Sam comes back and tries to console Angie, telling her he loves her, to which she replies “I know. I know you do.” Ouch! Her heart obviously belongs to the pipe-smokin’ old fossil. But, as Leslie Gore tells us, “She’s a fool,” because Mike Henry is not only a babe from the neck up, but was a former pro football player with a great body who briefly portrayed Tarzan, was the deputy in all three Smokey and the Bandit movies, and ended up as Ed on Gilmore Girls.
Anyway, so Weber must have some kind of plan, right? He does. He gets on the horn to the Russians and offers them himself, the plane, the senator and the disco agent. They cryptically say “thanks,” and he’s sure that they’re delighted to have someone like him on their side. I’m not sure, but I don’t think we ever saw what Weber’s real beef with the military is… he received all these decorations, and then are we just to assume the military screwed him over in some generic way? Like, apparently [the movie is saying] the military screws everyone so badly that we don’t even have to go into how they screwed Weber? Or he just went nutso? We’ll never really know. So everyone else gets to get off, and Angie calls up Hank and gives him one last chance to tell him he’ll run off with her, which he politely declines. He starts to thank her for all she’s been through, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She mopily runs off with Sam as though she’s getting a raw deal, when she clearly made out like a bandit. Stupid Angie.
So Weber dismisses Hank [after revealing that there never really was any bomb at all!], who tells Disco Agent he’d rather stay behind instead and kick Weber’s ass himself. He has to punch the Disco Agent out to get his way, but he ends up staying behind. Weber looks out the window and has a vision of the big military procession he recalled at the beginning, only now with Russian flags everywhere. But then, suddenly his vision clears and he sees that they aren’t welcoming him as a hero, there’s a ton of people out there with guns and they’re waiting for a madman! It’s kind of good because then he gets scared and its clear that he never considered this possibility. Then Hank comes back in and lays down some whup-ass, and takes the [again, required] bullet through the shoulder as he does. He and Weber get off the plane, Hank shoves Weber, and he gets mowed down with machine gun fire. I guess Hank wasn’t lying, though: no one died ON his plane. As Hank is put on a stretcher and taken away, he looks up in the sky just as a huge airliner is flying overhead, and once again his heart soars with the thrill of flight! Mankind’s ambition! To free the bonds of this bitter earth! To get half a can of soda and maybe 0.04 ounce of peanuts if you’re lucky!
< < < SPOILERS END
Overall, good fun! This is clearly a knockoff air disaster movie, and hits a lot of the cliché points of the genre, but let’s face it: it did it BEFORE most of the worst of the genre, when those things REALLY became clichés, and I mean Airport 75, 77 and 79. It also has a fairly decent story; I like the idea of this one psycho heading to Russia with his crazy, single-minded idea, and Brolin’s performance, while quite over the top, is pretty consistent and good. He’s engaging and you want to keep watching him. I also like Mimieux as a hot 70s babe, and Heston is, you know, Heston. Aside from the baby and the errant small plane, this film keeps distractions at a minimum, and we don’t go into secondary characters that ultimately don’t matter.
So it’s all kind of B-level, but still kind of decent! I’d much rather watch this than the original Airport. The other thing is has, for better or worse, is that momentum and structure of the 70s dimestore/airport novel, which you may or may not recall and have a fondness for. It just starts and keeps going, with bumps like the small plane coming, causing a momentary frisson, then going, never to be mentioned again. Unfortunately what this film is missing is the camp value of something like Airport 75 or especially 79 [not to say it is WITHOUT camp value], but it makes up for that in genuine entertainment. I say get Skyjacked!
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you’d like a good air disaster movie with just enough goofiness and just enough genuine action movie thrills.
