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Skyjacked
The success of 1970 Best Picture nominee Airport was the genesis of a new movie genre known as the Disaster film. The film also produced three sequels and countless imitations and rip-offs. One of the weaker rip-offs was a 1972 mess called Skyjacked.
This generic offering provided the usual disaster movie stereotypes cramped aboard a Boeing 707 originally bound for Minneapolis that eventually ends up being hijacked to Moscow by a deranged military man.
Stanley R. Greenberg's cliche-filled screenplay doesn't get a lot of help from John Guillermin's manic direction and headache-inducing camerawork. Guillermin's one storytelling trick to let us know what the character is feeling is with the use of extreme closeups of the character's nostrils that are supposed to let us know how terrified these people are. Unfortunately, Guillermin doesn't really take the time to let his cast members know exactly what they are supposed to be projecting at anytime. Not only that, but there are several moments where the camera is focused on a certain actor and the actor seems surprised like they didn't know the camera was coming their way.
There is one very convenient piece of plotting where the hijacker originally has the plane land in Anchorage before heading to Alaska. The onscreen explanation is that the hijacker wants to give them a chance to refuel but the real reason for the first stop seems to be to get all of the extras off the plane so that the demented hijacker only has to deal with the characters who are actually billed onscreen for the climactic journey to the USSR.
Charlton Heston, who was EVERYWHERE in the early 1970's gives another stone-faced performance as the macho pilot and Yvette Mimieux plays the head stewardess (it was the 70's, it was still OK to say "stewardess" instead of "flight attendant") with whom he was once involved, a backstory revealed in silly flashbacks scenes. James Brolin's maniacal. over-the-top histrionics as Jerome K. Weber, soldier turned hijacker are beyond annoying. Guillermin does show some promise here, which he would prove with his next project, The Towering Inferno, but this one is a silly and overwrought melodrama that drowns in its own pretentiousness.
The success of 1970 Best Picture nominee Airport was the genesis of a new movie genre known as the Disaster film. The film also produced three sequels and countless imitations and rip-offs. One of the weaker rip-offs was a 1972 mess called Skyjacked.
This generic offering provided the usual disaster movie stereotypes cramped aboard a Boeing 707 originally bound for Minneapolis that eventually ends up being hijacked to Moscow by a deranged military man.
Stanley R. Greenberg's cliche-filled screenplay doesn't get a lot of help from John Guillermin's manic direction and headache-inducing camerawork. Guillermin's one storytelling trick to let us know what the character is feeling is with the use of extreme closeups of the character's nostrils that are supposed to let us know how terrified these people are. Unfortunately, Guillermin doesn't really take the time to let his cast members know exactly what they are supposed to be projecting at anytime. Not only that, but there are several moments where the camera is focused on a certain actor and the actor seems surprised like they didn't know the camera was coming their way.
There is one very convenient piece of plotting where the hijacker originally has the plane land in Anchorage before heading to Alaska. The onscreen explanation is that the hijacker wants to give them a chance to refuel but the real reason for the first stop seems to be to get all of the extras off the plane so that the demented hijacker only has to deal with the characters who are actually billed onscreen for the climactic journey to the USSR.
Charlton Heston, who was EVERYWHERE in the early 1970's gives another stone-faced performance as the macho pilot and Yvette Mimieux plays the head stewardess (it was the 70's, it was still OK to say "stewardess" instead of "flight attendant") with whom he was once involved, a backstory revealed in silly flashbacks scenes. James Brolin's maniacal. over-the-top histrionics as Jerome K. Weber, soldier turned hijacker are beyond annoying. Guillermin does show some promise here, which he would prove with his next project, The Towering Inferno, but this one is a silly and overwrought melodrama that drowns in its own pretentiousness.