Sunday, January 19, 2020

Movie review - "Concorde - Airport 79" (1979) *

The fascinating thing about this movie is not that's bad, but all the different ways it manages to be bad. Whether it's George Kennedy going "they don't call this the cockpit for nothing" or constantly talking about his dead wife or his awkward banter with fellow pilot Alain Delon... actually make that everything Kennedy does... or Delon struggling with hi English and lack of chemistry with Kennedy or his poorly devised love subplot with Sylvia Kristel, or an assassin turning up at Susan Blakely's house or Blakely crawling on the roof escaping said assassin.. or the subplot where Blakely uncovers an arms racket run by boyfriend Robert Wagner who arranges for a missile to try to shoot down the Concorde, or Jimie Walker playing on a saxophone, or Martha Raye getting drenched in the toilet or... or...

The least silly thing about it is the romance between Jon Davidson and a Russian gymnast and that's still pretty silly. There are some scenes where the Concorde does a 360 with everyone wailing which are dumb too. Other highlights include Charo and her dog and Eddie Albert being an idiot in the cockpit waitinf for a subplot and... it's all pretty bad.

Structurally the film has a major problem in that the film consists of two flights - the Concorde takes off, is attacked by a missile, but manages to land safelty. Then it takes off again, a bomb goes off, and manages to land safely.

I should say that the moments where the bottom of the plane falls out and passengers can look through to the ground are well done. And I liked Delon having to land the plan on the snow at a ski field he was familiar with. Ed Begley Jr helps clear the ski field. Eric Roth wrote this. The ending feels very abrupt - a bit more of a denouement would've been nice.

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