This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Absolutely amazing

A different way of telling a story

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

You'll enjoy this movie even if you haven't seen "Airplane". But if you enjoy "Airplane" you'll see the setups for the jokes contained in "Airplane".

I watched it because it purported to be a John Wayne action film about piloting a crippled plane across the Pacific. It had 3.5 stars out of 4. Man, what a disappointment.For starters, it's not a John Wayne movie. He's the co-pilot, so Robert Stack the pilot has more lines than the Duke. It's an ensemble cast of stereotypes: the faded beauty, the young couple, the Asian immigrant, the bloviated Englishman, the unflappable stewardess, the shrewish wife, etc. To fill time (I guess), we get waaaay to many details into all their private lives. Phil Harris reliving his ruined Hawaiian vacation of a lifetime is particularly worthless. Others have rightly pointed out how one passenger fires his pistol at another - and nothing is done about it! (Another passenger takes the gun, then later gives it back??) But this flying soap opera is only part of the problem. Potemkin hammers overly dramatic melodies at every opportunity. The angle of a sailor on a ship relaying message is totally unnecessary. It seems like the whole West Coast scrambles when the plane issues a mayday - accompanied by more dramatic tunes.Perhaps the worst part is the handling of the emergency itself. The passengers remain totally calm and cooperative. There's little actual drama to it. Endless shots of the plane flying through stormy skies - and yet none while flying over San Francisco?? 1950s aviation may have been different, but I cannot believe it was solely the pilot's discretion to keep flying right over a major city with a crippled aircraft that by their own calculation was already out of fuel! There's hardly any communication with the tower on this. But they'll make it because, well, because John Wayne knows they will. His "If we can just make it for 30 more seconds." utterance tells you how poorly the sense of suspense was handled.The epilogue sums it up how bad this film was. The plane taxis right up to the terminal like nothing happened. Each passenger dramatically exits one-by-one as the score blares away, breezing through the press and marching off to a better and brighter future. Even the little boy who slept through it all. (How about waking him up to handle the expected crash landing?) The one (?!) airline official stoically puffs his stogie. The crew finally exits, spiffed up like it'd been a normal flight. No reports? No debrief? No nothing? Nope, just an "I'll call you." The best that can be said about this film is that it was the original airplane disaster film. Fans of "Airplane!" should definitely watch, as it borrowed heavily from this particularly the overly-dramatic utterances of Stack (aka Rex Kramer).I want these 2.5 hours of my life back.

"By tomorrow this will all just be an interesting experience." So said passenger Gustave Pardee (Robert Newton.) From my perspective he was half right. By tomorrow this will have been an experience. Interesting? That's an exaggeration.This is clearly the direct ancestor of the "Airport" series of movies. Arthur Hailey, who wrote the novel "Airport" on which that series was based, was clearly influenced by Ernest K. Gann, on whose novel this movie was based. Gann had experience as a pilot, and flew the run from Honolulu to the Pacific Coast of the US, so clearly he knew what he was talking about and he understood the conditions such pilots had to fly in. Had this movie paid more attention to the flight itself, rather than bogging us down with interminable minutiae about the personal lives of the passengers, this probably would have been more interesting. I didn't much care for the "Airport" series of movies either, but they did have more suspense in them, although they too fell into the trap of wanting to be soap operas. As "The High And The Mighty" begins we're treated to almost 20 minutes of watching passengers arriving at the airfield for their flight and baring the truly uninteresting details of their lives (including how old they are) to the check-in crew, I guess so we could get to know them. Did I care about what I was learning? Not really.Once on the plane it takes a while for the crisis to start, although every now and then the plane shakes a little, which is apparently supposed to be a sign that something's wrong. I guess I can buy that experienced pilots would know the difference between a problem and routine turbulence, but I've flown a fair bit and I've been on planes that shook me around a lot more than this without any crises erupting. Regardless. Once the crisis strikes, and people are told that the plane will have to ditch, everyone remains surprisingly calm, and what shows of emotion there were came across to me as rather unconvincing. The most emotion came before the crisis struck, when one passenger pulls a gun on another because he suspects his rival of hanky panky with his wife. He's disarmed of course, but the gun isn't confiscated. It's just held by another passenger until its owner gets it back by saying "I've calmed down now," or words to that effect, at which point it's just handed back to him. I don't know what's worse - that, or the ridiculous security procedures in existence today.Yes, "The High And The Mighty" is dated. That's hard to get around. The cockpit drama isn't much better, and it's in the cockpit where the tension really should be highest. Yes, Captain Sullivan (Robert Stack) has some sort of emotional paralysis come upon him, but he's rather easily snapped back to reality by co-pilot Dan Roman (John Wayne), who accomplishes that trick with a couple of smacks across the face. "Thanks, Dan, " says Sullivan, who then says he'll explain to Dan what caused him to freeze later, but we never do find out. Dan, on the other hand, is pretty old to be a co- pilot, but he was the pilot in a traumatic plane crash that wiped out his own family. Still, he's the guy in emotional control for most of this. Meanwhile, the navigator manages to mistake knots for miles per hour (I'm really glad I wasn't flying back in the 50's!) which causes all sorts of confusion. And for all that, there was never any real sense that this plane was in much trouble. Everybody was just too calm; too cool; too collected. Upon arrival in San Francisco, the passengers exit the plane one by one to be photographed by photographers, as a sort of "royal" sounding musical score plays. (In fact, I found a lot of the music in this to be irritating for some reason.)This was really lacking. In my opinion, not as good as 1970's "Airport" (which I didn't think was very good in the first place) and somehow you can't watch this without thinking of "Airplane" - maybe the presence of Robert Stack makes that comparison inevitable. "Airplane" is a lot more fun to watch. (2/10)

This is by no means a bad film. It's just not terribly original. The area of film-making where the plane gets into trouble and everyone's story on-board the plane gets told and why they're there was started with "Phonecall from a Stranger". A very fine film with Bette Davis in a minor role.This was a good watch but right off you already know the ending so what your in for is the stories from each passenger. What put them there and they tell their story and what not. All good actors in here but as I mention, not original.If you wanna get an idea of a good film with an airplane scenario...try a better film before this was made..."Island in the Sky". It's miles above this one in terms of enjoyment and edge of your seat thrills. You won't waste your time with this one and it has a lot of good points but go and find "Phonecall from a Stranger" and see what I mean.