Island in the Sky (1953)
A largely enjoyable film with a finale that annoys the shit out of me.
Set just after the war with John Wayne at the helm of a freight aircraft that has to crash land in the frozen Canadian wastes. With temperatures that plunge sub zero at night Wayne and his crew have to fight to stay alive until help comes.
It's lovely and atmospheric in that chilly frozen way that films like The Thing from Another World and Day of the Outlaw are, the crisp black and white photography making that iciness all the more chilling and the outcome for the characters who are all fully fleshed out all the more perilous. There's also some excellent aerial photography on show which makes the film ever more realistic.
And then we get to that finale. Search and rescue craft are circling the area for the second time when the survivors have the bright idea of using the flare guns. WTF?
You've had me watching for almost two hours with planes flying overhead and not seeing you and then in the last five minutes you decide to get out the flare guns? That's bloody stupid. It's like having a film with a bunch of folk treading water in the ocean for ninety minutes, then two minutes from the end one says "We could always get in the boat over there".
It annoyed me the first time i saw it and did so again. Other than that i like this movie.
|