I noticed the cast of this right away. Farrah Fawcett when she was married to Lee Majors, Sonny Bono, Walter Pidgeon, Danny Bonaduce and Robert Stack. I immediately assumed this was good, and it showed a producing credit by Aaron Spelling, so I knew this at least was maybe mildly good. Yo, get with the names son. You gotta know your 70's shit.
What we have here is a murder mystery that takes at least 20 minutes to get to the mystery and another 30 to get to the murder. Honestly, 45 minutes or so in I exclaimed aloud, "Is anyone gonna fucking die in this movie?!" I was in a moment of pure boredom, and there are a few of those in the movies, however there are also moments of true intrigue and moments or wondering what will happen next.
So it begins and we're on a giant 747 flying from New York to London. Piloted by Airplane actor and generally typecast no-nonsense Robert Stack, the flight is all business and good business at that. We have on board a rockstar played by Sonny Bono, Danny Bonaduce as a privileged 13 year old millionaire, Farrah Fawcett as an airline stewardess, Ralph Bellamy as a doctor, and George Maharis as a the only cop, 60,000 feet high over the ocean...
Back at flight control, they receive a note that was supposed to reach them the next day, it states, "as you know, deaths occurred on the flight" So now everyone is keyed into the supposed deaths that will happen on this flight. We follow the cop, the doctor, the musician, an old woman, a stewardess, a priest, basically anybody as we wonder "who is the killer" The movie leads us this way and that, throwing shade on one person then another while we wait (mildly bored) for the first killing to occur.
Like I said, there are moments where I got caught up in it. It's way too much talking for anyone to really care too much, but they do a good job balancing dialogue with intrigue for the most part. It tends to drag because it literally saves all the deaths for near the end, when there's no need. They tried to hard to have a "reason" for all the deaths, and they didn't think about what would keep the audience really interested. But still, characters are likable and things keep chugging along until everything comes to a typically overdone final few moments.
What do you want for your made for TV movie? It made me wonder, and I'm gonna google this: What is considered the BEST made for TV movie? Duel, being an early Steven Spielberg is immediately in the ranking. I'm also getting a lot of HBO stuff, which frankly, I don't count. Anyways. An interesting question (or is it?) I give this a 3.
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