Skyjacked (1972)

James Brolin really steals the show here as a crazed war veteran who hijacks a plane and causes utter mayhem with the terrified passengers and crew.Charlto Heston, again our hero, tries to thwart Brolin at every turn, and almost winds up dead for his actions.Jeanne Crain showed here that her film career was ending by having a very benign part as one of the passengers. Leslie Uggams, as a stewardess, comes across as a thin, modern day Hattie McDaniel, acting totally subservient here. This was so unlike her actions in the television masterpiece Backstairs at the White House.The film is definitely exciting and action packed. Even when the hijacker's identity is revealed half-way through the film, we're still in for plenty of excitement and adventure as the plane heads for Moscow.Walter Pidgeon has a small part as a U.S.Senator on his way to a mission by the president.

!!!! SUGGESTIVE SPOILERS !!!! The problem with a film like this is that the central plot has been done so many times over the following decades . Man sneaks bomb on board a plane . To be honest the premise of SKYJACKED wasn't earth shatteringly original in 1972 because it had been used previously in the original AIRPORT movie a couple of years earlier and it does have a slight feel that it's trying to cash in on a very successful previous movie Perhaps because it's such an old film SKYJACKED does have one thing in its favour and that is ironically the entirely dated feel as to what life was like for plane passengers in the early 1970s . It might be seen inconvenient these days but there's a very good reason why airport security is notoriously pedantic and that is to stop passengers smuggling aboard a bag full of contraband such as explosives and firearms on to a plane , but the idea of someone holding a gun in one hand and a grenade in another with a request of " Hello there . I wish to speak to the captain of this plane " would not have seemed absurd in 1972 One interesting aspect that does seem groundbreaking is having the villain a violent sociopath from a military background alienated by his reaction from civilian society is stock villainy and has been for several decades . The idea of a deranged Vietnam veteran is effectively an invention of Hollywood and we all remember Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER and John Eastland from THE EXTERMINATOR along with a line sampled from Paul Hardcastle's 19 . The reality was that veterans from that particular conflict only had a slightly more than average mental health problem and criminal tendency from the average male demographic of that era . True but the myth remains and as John Ford was fond of saying " Always print the legend "

There's a certain amount of fun to be had trying to keep count of how many times Charlton Heston uses the word "damn" in SKYJACKED, but other than that, this is a pretty goofy potboiler. Director John Guillermin tries mightily to infuse the film with some substance by including some awkward flashbacks but they just come off as silly, adding nothing to the development of a lot of cardboard characters. Heston is the captain of an airliner hijacked by kooky James Brolin. All of the passengers are let go save for the (semi) all-star first class passengers: Walter Pidgeon; Susan Dey; Rosie Grier; Jeanne Crain. Foxy Yvette Mimieux is the head stewardess involved in a love triangle with Heston and co-pilot Mike Henry and Mariette Hartley plays a pregnant woman. It's ridiculous, escapist fun.

Considering the popularity of the disaster-movie heyday of the 1970s, it’s surprising that I took so long to catch this one; perhaps I thought that, having already watched AIRPORT 1975 (1974), made it somewhat redundant. Truth be told, I taped it twice off TV (both local and Cable, though always in pan-and-scan) – but only managed to get to it via Warners’ bare-bones DVD (released as part of a batch of “Cult Camp Classics”, which also included the similarly airborne flick ZERO HOUR! [1957]). This was also Charlton Heston’s introduction to the genre – he would follow it with EARTHQUAKE (1974), the aforementioned AIRPORT 1975, TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976) and GRAY LADY DOWN (1978): all of these apart from the first one, I was only familiar with via a childhood viewing on Italian TV but, since I own the lot on DVD-R, I now opted to include the last three in my ongoing Heston tribute.Anyway, the film itself isn’t too bad as these things go (in the AIRPORT [1970] mold yet anticipating, in fact emerging as slightly superior to, any of the sequels) – but, having watched it, I can’t say that the epithet of “Camp” was too far off in its case! This has to do as much with the dated feel of it all (the look, the soundtrack, the politics) as the contrived melodramatics of the plot (married pilot Heston has had a fling with stewardess Yvette Mimieux – his kid sister from DIAMOND HEAD [1963]! – whose new beau is, of all people, the co-pilot…and, amid this soap opera stuff, he has to contend with an unbalanced soldier – an eye-rolling showcase for James Brolin – who threatens the plane with a bomb because he wants to defect to Russia!). The brief flashes to the corny Heston/Mimieux romance and Brolin’s back-story (whose deranged state-of-mind eventually transforms into a fantasy sequence depicting his reception by the Soviets!) add to the fun factor.The solid MGM production managed a fair name cast (a given for this type of film, going back to the grand-daddy of them all – THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY [1954]): also appearing in the film are Claude Akins (in a one-scene role as a George Kennedy/Joe Patroni wannabe, guiding the plane-in-peril towards a safe landing in Alaska), Walter Pidgeon (as an elderly Senator whose destination, a fishing trip with his teenage son, is diverted by a direct call from the U.S. President!), Jeanne Crain (as a passenger whose shaky relationship with her husband is saved when he uncharacteristically decides to turn heroic and confronts Brolin) and Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier (as a cello-playing jazz musician who, sitting next to Brolin, is first alerted to his disturbed personality – ironically, it was Heston’s personal intervention that won Brolin a seat on the plane in the first place!).Of course, it all ends badly for Brolin – as he finds the Russians aren’t as willing to obtain his services as he had anticipated; just as predictably, Heston – who has to take a lot of crap, and a good trashing, from Brolin during the flight – stays behind to fight for his plane…which he does almost at the cost of his own life. For the record, director Guillermin would go on to co-direct what turned out to be perhaps the definitive disaster epic of the age – THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974); incidentally, I’ve just acquired one of the two novels on which that film was based and, besides, I need to pick up its 2-Disc “Special Edition” re-issue – as well as the equivalent one for another touchstone of the genre, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) – which I’ve been postponing long enough already...