Sun 19 Jun 2016
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: SKYJACKED (1972).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[8] Comments
SKYJACKED. MGM, 1972. Charlton Heston, Yvette Mimieux, James Brolin, Claude Akins, Jeanne Crain, Susan Dey, Roosevelt Grier, Mariette Hartley, Walter Pidgeon, Ken Swofford, Leslie Uggams. Based on the novel Hijacked by David Harper. Director: John Guillermin.
Sometimes films with all-star casts, no matter how stellar, end up falling a bit flat. That’s the case with Skyjacked, a Hollywood disaster film about a deranged American soldier (James Brolin) suffering from post-traumatic stress who hijacks an American airliner.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some genuinely tense moments in the movie, or that Charlton Heston doesn’t give a solid, eminently believable performance as the airplane’s captain. It’s just that, despite the presence of veteran actors and actresses such as Brolin, Yvette Mimieux, Walter Pidgeon, and Claude Akins, the whole production ends up feeling rather languid, as if all the characters were going through the motions, behaving in the most stereotypical manner possible. (See, for instance, the pregnant woman who goes into labor mid-hijacking, and the laid back African-American jazz musician who ends up seated next to the overwrought hijacker).
From what I can tell, however, Skyjacked was the first major Hollywood production where an airline hijacking was central to the plot. In that sense, the movie was the template for things to come. Unfortunately, it’s now all but impossible to watch this John Guillermin-directed work without one’s mind drifting and thinking about Airplane (1980), the Paramount comedy that successfully mocked and played homage to the numerous airline disaster movies such as this one that Hollywood churned out during the 1970s.
June 19th, 2016 at 6:06 am
I would have paid to hear Charlton Heston say, “And don’t call me ‘Shirley’!”
June 19th, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Perhaps it would have been better if Mimeux had taken her clothes off. Just a thought.
June 19th, 2016 at 3:07 pm
One problem is because of the cast it plays like an all star movie of the week more than a feature, plus all the elements are so damned familiar. If a computer took elements from all the previous air disaster films and used an algorithm to write an airline disaster movie I suspect this would be the one it wrote.
At the time there was some controversy about the deranged Vietnam veteran angle, a lot of people felt it was exploitive and unfair. My own reaction was I didn’t know Brolin was a good enough actor to overact that badly. He wasn’t convincing enough in the role to be all that offensive, but at the time every television cop show had done an episode of the crazed Vietnam vet theme and it was starting to become an unpleasant cliché and cause a bit of a stink with veterans organizations.
I read the book by David Harper, and while it was no great shakes, and the film adapted it faithfully, it was still better than the film.
Not that I wanted my money back or anything, it was just all rather bland compared to better films in the genre. Very much by rote. You could almost predict the moment when each new element, action, or character would be introduced.
The airplane disaster film started in the thirties though usually the action took place on the ground in some remote place where the plane was forced down, but really took off with writers like Ernest K. Gann, Nevil Shute, Arthur Hailey, and David Beatty and adaptations of their books like THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, NO HIGHWAY, RUNWAY ZERO EIGHT (ZERO HOUR), and TROUBLE IN THE SKY as travel by air became more and more common. The problem for SKYJACKED is every one of those films was a hundred times better and fresher despite being ten to fifteen years older better filmed, acted, directed, and written.
When skyjacking hit the news there was bound to be a film about it, and while this may be the first to directly deal with it the idea was parodied as early as IN LIKE FLINT where James Coburn’s Flint hijacks a Cuban military flight disguised as a Cuban soldier.
Other than Rosy Grier what I remember most about this one is the flashbacks of the romance between Heston and Mimieux. I don’t know why, they aren’t particularly well done and the two weren’t all that believable as a couple, but that’s what I remember about SKYJACKED.
This is one that did everything well enough but it had all been done before and done better, and the one new element simply wasn’t all that compelling.
I will give it this, the first time I saw it I liked it more, but subsequent viewings have revealed more cracks in the façade. It doesn’t hold up as well as other films in the genre do.
June 19th, 2016 at 3:10 pm
Apart from Heston, that seems more like a TV movie cast of the time.
June 19th, 2016 at 3:14 pm
What I remember most about that era and skyjacking was that I was flying a great deal and it had become bad enough by 1974 the State Department made those of us who carried black State Department Reserve passports change to the usual government blue and even removed the discreet little R so we would not be singled out if the plane was taken.
Maybe this hit too close to home.
June 19th, 2016 at 3:25 pm
Based on David’s recollection, sounds like it plays like a TV movie, too.
June 19th, 2016 at 3:37 pm
Gary R.
It has a definite movie of the week feel to it, and did even on the big screen. At the time I recall being surprised at Heston doing it. With the exception of Mimieux, who would shortly be more common on television, everyone in it was either a former big name who had done television for years like Walter Pidgeon and Jeanne Crain or actors who primarily did television like Uggams, Grier, Brolin, and the rest.
There is a feeling about the film that the producer must have asked himself how cheaply he could film it and still release it as an A feature film.
July 11th, 2018 at 4:57 am
Look for a Brady/Partridge connection, as Nicholas Hammond (“Big Man On Campus” Doug Simpson from the classic Brady Bunch episode where Marcia gets hit in the nose with a football) becomes a love interest for Susan Dey (“Laurie Partridge”).