The Concorde: Airport '79
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| The Concorde...Airport '79 | |
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| Directed by | David Lowell Rich |
| Produced by | Jennings Lang |
| Written by | Jennings Lang (story) Eric Roth (screenplay) |
| Starring | Alain Delon Susan Blakely Robert Wagner |
| Music by | Lalo Schifrin |
| Cinematography | Philip H. Lathrop |
| Editing by | Dorothy Spencer |
| Distributed by | Universal |
| Release date(s) | August 17, 1979 |
| Running time | 123 min. |
| Language | English |
| Preceded by | Airport '77 |
| IMDb profile | |
The Concorde...Airport '79 is a 1979 American disaster film (in the UK, it was released a year later as Airport '80: The Concorde). The film was the fourth and final instalment of the Airport series and is widely considered the poorest effort of the series. Upon the film's release, it was universally derided by critics. Despite poor reviews, the film made US$13 million [1] at the box office.
Some, such as All Movie Guide's Bruce Eder have interpreted the film as a self-parody, due to the film's outrageous premise, situations, and casting. In The Concorde...Airport '79, the airplane flips upside down, which, among other aerial acrobatics, would destroy such an aircraft. Also notable is the casting of Mercedes McCambridge as a Russian Olympics coach. For a period in the 1950s, McCambridge was blacklisted during the Red Scare in America.
Many of the flying sequences in the movie feature Concorde F-BTSC. Coincidentally this aircraft, operating as Air France Flight 4590, is the same Concorde that crashed into a hotel after take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport on July 25, 2000 killing all on board, and four in the hotel.
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[edit] Plot
Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) co-pilots the inaugural flight of the first Concorde supersonic jetliner owned by an American airline with Paul Metrand (Alain Delon). Unfortunately, anti-Concorde protests are nothing compared to the threats to this plane: a reporter Maggie Whelan (Susan Blakely) is on board, and she has hold of documents that indict her boyfriend Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner), an arms manufacturer, for illegal weapons sales to communist countries during the Cold War. He is determined to destroy the Concorde if that's what it will take to silence the woman.
[edit] Cast
- Alain Delon as Capt. Paul Metrand
- Susan Blakely as Maggie Whelan
- Robert Wagner as Kevin Harrison
- Sylvia Kristel as Isabelle
- George Kennedy as Capt. Joe Patroni
- Eddie Albert as Eli Sands
- Bibi Andersson as Francine
- Charo as Margarita
- John Davidson as Robert Palmer
- Andrea Marcovicci as Alicia Rogov
- Martha Raye as Loretta
- Cicely Tyson as Elaine
- Jimmie Walker as Boise
- David Warner as Peter O'Neill
- Mercedes McCambridge as Nelli
- Monica Lewis as Gretchen
- Stacy Heather Tolkin as Irina
