The Concorde... Airport '79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979)

One of the last airport disaster movies from the 70s. Probably also one of the silliest and thus quite enjoyable.

First thing to notice is that only one third of the movie actually takes place in the plane. It takes 35 minutes for that fucking Concorde to finally take off. Until then we are introduced to the few sub-plots about passengers and - more importantly - about a sinister plot to take this plan down in order to kill a investigating journalist carrying some incriminating documents.

But it is well worth waiting. Because what follows is acrobatic maneuvering of this giant plane (weighting almost 80 tonnes empty) in order to first avoid the high-tech guiding missile and then to avoid fighter jet that launches 5 more missiles. And this is where we see the best scene of the movie where pilot opens the window of the cockpit and fires a flare from a signal pistol so that its heat can confuse those rockets. At speed of 2 mach make no mistake! Shot pretty unimaginative using some very obvious plane model. Good old special effects, nostalgic and very funny. It has left me speechless and wanting more of such insanities.

There's another - almost equally absurd - situation later on when they manage to land this huge plane without any casualties in Austrian alps. Once again, great fun but not as much as those missiles.

Cast is not the usual "disaster movie" all star. Delon is its biggest name but he doesn't really have enough of screen time to be movie's main vehicle. He certainly doesn't seem to be even remotely interested in being one. Plus his buddy-buddy scenes with George Kennedy are quite hard to stomach, especially the usual family shit about his dead wife. There's a bit of chemistry between him and lovely Sylvia Kristel and to be honest, I think she does the best job in this flick.

6/10