Jet Storm

Ernest Tilley (Attenborough) has discovered the identity of the man who drunkenly killed his baby daughter in a hit-and-run, and armed with a bomb boards the same flight as him. Tilley is deeply depressed and obsessed with killing this man at any cost, even if it means killing his own family and everyone on board. Attenborough plays Tilley very quietly, a man hollowed out by his depression and hatred, not only for the hit-and-run driver, but for the whole world. As the film progresses, it is very easy to feel real sorrow for him. The writer and the director keep the lid firmly on for most of the time, only allowing the anger and fear to burst out in small doses. The other seats on board are occupied by many faces of the time, including Dame Sybil Thorndyke and Harry Secombe, who sit together and do a grand job of lightening the mood with their witty and charming performances. Husband and wife Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly don't do much and neither does Marty Wilde. Very nice to see Stanley Baker playing against the usual 'thick ear' parts he normally gets, and he turns in a very good part. This film will not appeal to modern audiences who need an explosion or slanging match every five minutes. It's a character study, and a very British one at that. If you like your thrillers with a bit of humanity and depth, I can thoroughly recommend this impressive film. DVD from Simply.

This has to be a key progenitor to the modern disaster movie well before the famous Airport series for instance. There are scenes in this repeated with great hilarity in Airplane! too. But here the style is of a serious drama and thriller, as opposed to a comedy, except for the inevitable inadvertent howlers for the contemporary viewer. There's a preponderance of excellent actors at all levels with quite a lot to offer in the now standard character-development phase of the plot -- there are ongoing themes on typical preoccupations of the era like social class prejudice, the destruction of world wars and fears of nuclear apocalypse, and lots on the burgeoning sexual revolution to name a few. With stuff like this the real action and indeed the plausibility of the plot becomes strangely irrelevant. But if one cares to pick the latter apart it's not hard to see wobbly elements like the odd two-level areoplane in the studio when the external shots are of a re-fitted Tuplov Soviet nuclear bomber with just a single deck fuselage. The addition of the "lounge deck" is important in the story, and anyway adds to the feel of specialness and luxury that flight in the 1960s was synonymous with. So, for the excellent drama, and the bits of cultural history alone I give this 9/10 with just a point loss on the plausibility front. Attenborough is excellent as the creepy antagonist.

Following the success of 'The League of Gentlemen', Dickie Attenborough began mobilising his own films and appeared in other films to raise the money to continue making his own (in the same way that Laurence Olivier was acting in films in order to finance his own stage productions at the National Theatre). This film is one of them.

A British aviation thriller; A story about a former scientist aboard a commercial airplane flying from London to New York who threatens the safety of the passengers in his plan to confront a man who he believes is responsible for the hit-and-run death of his young daughter. An intelligent script provides some tension as well as melodrama and humour but it is a touch naive with constant moralising and the eventual payoff which is contrived. With many of the tropes of the disaster movie genre, the plot is interesting as the alarmed passengers soon divide into groups: reactionary and liberal. Richard Attenborough brings a convincing complexity to the role of bereft father, and danger which maintains the danger throughout, and the film boasts a starry British cast delivering good character-driven performances.

Jet Storm is directed by Cy Endfield, who also co-writes the screenplay with Sigmund Miller. It stars Richard Attenborough, Stanley Baker, Hermione Baddeley, Bernard Braden, Diane Cilento, Barbara Kelly and David Kossoff. Music is by Thomas Rajna and cinematography by Jack Hildyard. Plot finds Attenborough as Ernest Tilley, a man still angry and grieving over the hit-and-run killing of his seven year old daughter. Tracking down James Brock (George Rose), the man responsible for the accident, he boards the same aeroplane flight as him and threatens to blow it up as an act of vengeance against Brock and mankind for allowing him to get away with his crime.

It's a real hard film to track down. Packed to the rafters with British acting talent, it has rarely been licensed to even be shown in the United Kingdom. I myself had to order a DVD copy from Australia, but the wait was very much worth it.

As has been noted by the very few reviews of the film on the internet, it's a British prototype disaster movie, but that in no way means this is cornball stuff, it's a very human and intelligent drama. Endfield's film is looking into how a number of people react differently when faced with the possibility of death, while it casts a scathing eye towards a society that creates someone like Ernest Tilley. How would you react if you faced impending death on board a plane? How would you react if your child was killed and the man responsible got away with it? Searching questions that of course don't bare thinking about, but that's why we have cinema, to let us escape into a dramatic world that paints possibilities for us.

The ream of character sub-plots are excellently performed by the huge cast, but it's Attenborough and Baker who shine brightest. The former has Tilley as hollowed and tragic, a man tipped over the edge, pain seeping from every pore. The latter has Captain Bardow as silky smooth, calm during crisis, it's an elegant portrayal by one of Britain's most under valued actors. Elsewhere, Endfield does a marvellous job of threading so many character strands together, making one successful whole and he deftly paces it and brings it in under 90, exposition free, minutes. The lovely title song is called Jetstream (a working title for the film), not Jet Storm as is listed on IMDb, and it's warbled by Marty Wilde (lyrics by Endfield) who also features in the cast.

An under seen British classic of entertaining substance, one that also has the requisite drama and suspense as it dangles its questions. 8/10