Highly Overrated But Still Good

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

"Fate is the Hunter" is my favorite book (I'm an avid reader who has read thousands). It is a compilation of the events that Ernest Gann experienced throughout his career as a Commercial Airline Pilot. The studio and or the Producer bought the title and had Harold Medford write the screenplay. Mr. Gann considered suing the production company because the film doesn't even resemble the story in the book.Being both a pilot and a film buff, I was extremely disappointed with this movie. The people who made it had zero knowledge of aircraft or aviation making that part of the film difficult to watch. However, Glenn Ford turns in his usual good performance. Nancy Kwan and Suzanne Pleshette are stunning, and Rod Taylor turned in a believable characterization of a flawed yet admirable man.Gann was not just a good aviation author, he was a great one along with Stephen Coonts and Richard Bach. He wrote "The High and the Mighty" which was a very good film that closely resembled the book. My advice is to read the book and enjoy Gann's extraordinary ability to relate an interesting story. Then, if you have two hours when there is not anything else that interests you on TV, watch the film with a jaundiced eye and enjoy some good performances by a venerable cast.

Fate Is The Hunter casts Glenn Ford as an airline executive and former pilot who is investigating the crash of an airline at his airport where a former Korean war buddy Rod Taylor was the pilot. Most on the flight were killed, one of the survivors was stewardess Susanne Pleshette.Ford has a vested interest both professional and personal, he hired Taylor as a pilot and his judgment is called in question as well. And Taylor was a roguish sort of guy who bent the rules considerably. But Ford knew Taylor as a man cool in combat and we see Taylor after the initial crash in all sides of his character in flashback.The film is based on an Ernest K. Gann novel who also gave us Island In The Sky and The High And The Mighty. The film keeps the attention throughout with its documentary like approach. Ford is a man with a disagreeable task and he's praying his faith in Taylor will not be in vain.The airline is more interested in covering itself in case of potential lawsuits than at getting at the truth. Pilot error is the easiest explanation all around and Taylor's past doesn't help any.There are a couple of noteworthy supporting performances first being Dorothy Malone who was not billed oddly enough as a party girl who Taylor was involved with and dumped. It's a chip off the performance Malone gave as Marilee Hadley in Written On The Wind. Also noteworthy is Wally Cox who was a fellow crewman on Taylor and Ford's ship in Korea who provides an insight into an incident in Korea that Ford does not remember fondly.What does cause the crash? It's something quite trivial, but Taylor's posthumous reputation owes a debt of gratitude to Susanne Pleshette surviving the crash and to the black box recording even then, standard on commercial flights. It was kind of quaint seeing the airline investigators playing the black box recording on those old fashioned reel to reel tapes.For aviation fans and fans of the principal players and many others. A really good piece of work that all the cast could take pride in.

This movie is one of my all-time favorites that I'm happy to share tonight with my movie-buff husband who has never seen it. (I'll bet Tony DiNozzo would remember it, though.) I've been trying to remember the title for ages (couldn't recall Rod Taylor's last name to look it up online. Getting senile I guess.)I agree with Roscoe-4. "It illustrates the many zany and unusual things that can happen to change our lives forever." The actual cause of this plane crash has stuck with me since I first saw the film over 30 years ago on TV. Many times I have caught myself in the midst of a possible negative chain-of-events and changed something I was doing because of this movie (especially if there was a cup of coffee involved in what I was doing). It also probably lead to my interest in Multivariate Statistics (quantification of the phenomenon of multiple variables leading to a single outcome.)Personally, I think everyone should see this film. At least it tells a person to keep looking deeper for causes instead of assuming that "what you think is accurate" is also worth believing just because "it makes sense" to you. "It makes sense" should never be enough by itself to lead us all the way to a conclusion.

I'm afraid that I am not as enthusiastic about this film as so many other reviewers seem, bewilderingly, to be. The writing is dreadful, painting comic-book characters with no depth or subtlety. Glenn Ford does his best to make his central character interesting but nearly all of the main characters in the film are middle-aged men who spend most of their screen time shouting and snarling at each other. This is especially true of Rod Taylor's character who is absolutely ridiculous and as likable as a sticky doorknob.The basic premise of the story is silly, too. While commercial air crash investigations have certainly become more systematic and sophisticated since the 1960's, they were never such shallow, personal journeys as this story would depict. One man's journey to vindicate an old war buddy...who he really didn't even like. Oh please.And what the heck is with that utterly irrelevant cameo by Jane Russell?! If you're on a mission to see every Glenn Ford film and you've missed this one, then by all means sit in front of it once. But I really doubt you'll want to sit through it a second time. It's just too painful.