It’s time for an old airplane thriller and I can safely say that this one has withstood the test of time really well. The drama is solid and the characters are pretty good throughout. The movie itself is fairly short but still manages to cram a lot in. As long as you are a fan of the old time films and the retro style of writing then you should have a good time here.

The main character here is a man named Stryker who is haunted my memories of the past. One of his missions did not go well and his decisions directly caused several people to lose their lives. Stryker never forgave himself for this and unfortunately this has taken a toll on his personal life as well. His wife has decided to leave with their son and Stryker just barely manages to follow them onto the plane. He has to find a way to save this relationship but how can he pull himself together? He won’t have much time to worry about this as a poisoned seafood dinner knocks out over half the crew as well as both of the pilots. Stryker will need to land this plane down along with his wife’s help but nobody has any confidence in him. Especially not his old Captain who will be walking them through this from the ground level.

Now it is naturally going to be hard to get past trauma and we see this first hand with Stryker. The flashbacks just come in fast and hard. Even when he is working on landing, he still sees other planes trying to shoot him down. This leads to multiple encounters where he nearly ends up destroying them all. I admit that by the end this definitely gets pretty annoying because the stakes are much too high for this. It’s not like you can just stick the trauma in a pocket and ignore it but hopefully you can at least suppress it long enough to get everyone to safety.

Meanwhile his wife really isn’t helping with how she keeps talking about how he has no chance. The doctor has to spell it out for her that everyone is going to die otherwise so it’s not like things can get worse. I don’t think you should need to be reminded of the stakes in a situation like this. By the end she begins to respect her husband again and stops being a debbie downer but it sure took a while.

The best character here has to be the doctor. He quickly gets to business when he finds out what is going on. He never panics and manages to convince everyone to do their parts in getting through this situation. Without him then everybody would have absolutely been dead. They’re really lucky that a doctor was on board. Meanwhile the Captain may be an almost antagonistic force at times with how much he doesn’t like Stryker but you can totally understand.

Stryker doesn’t seem to do well with authority and the whole past events that started the trauma in the first place would naturally be something that makes the Captain have some negative feelings towards him as well. The captain is still professional all the way through though and knows that his mission is to try and save lives. For that reason there is just one part that makes him look bad.

Near the end of the film there is a ton of smog so the captain tells Stryker to keep the plane in the air despite hearing that most of the crew only has minutes left to live. Obviously staying in the air isn’t a good idea at that point and so you just have to risk your life and try for the choppy landing. The captain should have been getting on board with that plan a lot sooner even if he does get some credit for recognizing that Stryker is in control right now. So he doesn’t drag the issue once he sees that the plane is coming down anyway.

The film is pretty short like I mentioned before but the pacing is definitely on point. The events happen really quickly and there is never any dead air. The airplane also makes for a good plot location because with everyone restricted, that just makes all of the tension even greater. There is no escape for anybody, they are all just having to hope for the best here.

The writing is also pretty good which is no real surprise for a film from this era. The writing always had a certain level of class to it and I like how sophisticated everyone is. These guys were clear professionals the whole way through. If I had any issues with the film it would just be that I thought Stryker’s PTSD was a little too strong. I feel like it should have gone away by the end of the film because the current disaster should be way too stressful to be thinking about anything else.

It’s easy to fall into mental traps when you’re by yourself and have no distractions. When you’re piloting a plane that is about to crash into the Earth? I just don’t think there is enough peace and quiet to get into your own head like that. It seems like it would be a stretch to me at least and the film didn’t exactly need any extra drama. It did make for a pretty cool visual where we see the controls turning into an enemy fighter jet. That was pretty good, definitely impressive for the 50s in terms of special effects.

Overall, I would recommend checking this film out. It’s a strong film all around with good characters and no big issues. There is a lot of replay value here and in a way you should watch it before checking out the original Airplane film to really understand all of the gags. Airplane is naturally the much better film but I can see why it took so much inspiration from this one. The better a film is, the more effectively you can make a parody out of it since you need a good foundation for the gags to be thrown on top of it.

Overall 7/10