Skyjacked (1972)

Skyjacking, when a person or group of persons hijacked a plan in flight for criminal or political purposes is something that used to happen a lot more then it does today. In the 1970's it was enough a part of the zeitgeist to lend a little topicality to the subject matter of director John Guillermin's 1972 film Skyjacked. It's a simple enough premise, a flight to Minneapolis receives word in the form of a lipstick scrawled message in the first-class restroom, that there is a passenger on board with a bomb and he intends to detonate it unless the plan re-routes to Anchorage, Alaska. There is a period in which it is not clear if the threat is real and if it is which of the passengers is responsible. Eventually the perp revels himself to be James Brolin, playing a mentally unhinged army officer on the verge of court martial. Brolin successful gets pilot Charlton Heston (who a few years later would also play a pilot in the better known Airplane in peril film Airport 1975), to get the plane to Anchorage and there forces its refueling so that Brolin can take the plane and its first class passengers, including a US senator (Walter Pidgeon, a Canadian who also played a US senator in the film Advise and Consent), to the Soviet Union where he plans to defect.

The film is split into two legs of flight as it where, the first just domestic terrorism, and the second potentially an international incident as the American commercial passenger plan heads into Soviet airspace without permission, adding another level of peril to the proceedings. Like most films of this nature there are a number of subplots involving the various passengers and crew, including a love triangle with Heston, his co-pilot, and a lovely stewardess played by Yvette Mimieux, as well as a frustrated business man and his wife, a black jazz musician, a young hippie girl (The Partridge Family's Susan Day), the senators son, and of course a pregnant women in danger of going into labor at any time. It's all well handled, this is genera that Guillermin manages well, he would later direct The Towering Inferno. Nothing too amazing, but featuring a suitably unhinged performance by Brolin. Also I always like seeing Leslie Uggams. **1/2