So, this can\u2019t be a real movie review.\u00a0 I really haven\u2019t seen the whole movie so it would be false advertising to claim I was a fair reviewer.\u00a0 But even viewing the part of the movie I watched I felt moved to talk about this \u201cgem.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something about movies about airliners in danger that seems to liberate the cast and producers from trying to produce a good film.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s Dean Martin in \u201cAirport\u201d in the 1970s or Bill Shatner in \u201cTerror at 20,000 Feet\u201d on the Twilight Zone, these airline flights always seem to degenerate into a race to the bottom between the awful plot and the staggeringly bad dialog and wooden acting.<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m proud to add \u201cThe High and Mighty\u201d to this Olympus of aero-schlock.\u00a0 And it has some amazing features.\u00a0 Heading up the cast is John Wayne as Dan Roman the first officer on a commercial airliner flying from Honolulu to San Francisco.\u00a0 The captain is John Sullivan played laconically by Robert Stack whom I only remember as Elliot Ness on tv\u2019s \u201cThe Untouchables.\u201d\u00a0 The only other familiar names in the cast are Robert Newton and Claire Trevor as random passengers and Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer in a very minor part as a Coast Guard junior officer.\u00a0 But it really doesn\u2019t matter whether the actors are well-known or unknowns because no actual acting is committed anywhere in the movie that I witnessed.<\/p>\n
There is plot and it involves various passengers describing their mental problems or trying to shoot each other over a supposed marital affair but the main event is one of the engines exploding and the plane losing enough fuel to make a forced landing in the Pacific Ocean the aviation peril that every good disaster movie needs.\u00a0 And so, for about three quarters of the movie the flight engineer, the first officer and the captain bicker about whether they should drop the plane in the ocean or try to make it to San Francisco.\u00a0 Eventually after the flight engineer realizes that he has been mixing up knots with miles per hour, he delivers the bad news; they will run out of fuel, eleven minutes short of the airport and Robert Stack makes the executive decision that they will ditch.\u00a0 But John Wayne keeps stalling him because he\u2019s hoping that a tail wind will appear and save them the extra fuel.\u00a0 But a half hour before the end of the 147-minute movie Stack shouts that he\u2019s going to ditch the plane.\u00a0 At which point John Wayne slaps him across the face and calls him a pansy (or something) and takes over the controls.\u00a0 And a few minutes later Stack thanks Wayne for straightening him out and at long last the plane lands without any loss of life or cinematic interest.\u00a0 When measured by the ground crew there is only thirty gallons of fuel left.<\/p>\n
So, do I recommend this movie?\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazingly bad and without redeeming qualities.\u00a0 Except one.\u00a0 John Wayne gets to play John Wayne without any pretense to art.\u00a0 It\u2019s the Duke slapping around wimps and generating jet fuel out of thin air.\u00a0 For any real fan of John Wayne that\u2019s enough for an amusing visit.<\/p>\n