The Concorde... Airport '79 4K 1979 Ultra HD 2160p

Storyline
American based Federation World Airlines has just acquired a Concorde jet, which will make its inaugural commercial flight from Washington D.C. to Paris and then to Moscow as a goodwill gesture prior to the 1980 Olympic Games. Among those on board is Maggie Whelan, a television reporter, who is taking both legs of the trip. Just after boarding at Dulles International Airport, she receives documents conclusively and unequivocally stating that her boyfriend, Dr. Kevin Harrison, the Chairman of Harrison Industries, an aerospace contractor, is complicit of illegally selling arms to enemy regimes. Regardless, Maggie loves Kevin, who vows to do the right thing by making a public statement to his illegal activities. Maggie also intends on making an on-air report of the story once she arrives in Moscow. Kevin, however, has other thoughts. He plans on destroying the documents, the most convenient way being to bring down the Concorde with Maggie aboard, initially having the attack on the plane as a technical error, then pinning the attack on one of the many activist groups opposed to the Concorde itself or the upcoming Olympics. Concorde Captains Joe Petroni and Paul Metrand do whatever they have to to combat the attacks on the plane, the masterminds behind of which they nor Maggie are aware

User Review
Fourth and final entry in the series that began in 1970. That first film helped kickstart the all-star big budget disaster trend in 70's cinema, and this final outing helps just as much at putting the final nails in the genre's coffin. Of course "Airplane" the following year would make fun of the entire previous decade's worth of disaster films.

Alain Delon gets top billing as the captain of the title craft. With Susan Blakely and John Davidson as reporters, Robert Wagner as a crooked arms dealer, Sylvia Kristel as the head stewardess, Eddie Albert as the airline owner, Sybil Danning as his trophy wife, Avery Schreiber as a Soviet Olympic coach with a deaf daughter, Andrea Marcovicci as the oldest Russian Olympic gymnast ever, Mercedes McCambridge as her busybody chaperone, Cicely Tyson as a mother to a child desperately in need of a heart transplant, Nicolas Coaster as the doctor to perform it, David Warner as the dieting flight engineer, Bibi Andersson as a prostitute, Jimmie Walker as a pot-smoking sax player, Charo as Margarita and Martha Raye as the woman who can't stay out of the bathroom (no, really).

George Kennedy costars as Patroni, the only character to appear in all four films. This time he has a larger part as co-pilot of the title passenger jet, on route from the US to Paris, as Wagner's evil arms dealer hatches numerous inept plans to bring down the craft and destroy incriminating evidence. The dialogue is trite and banal as usual, and the various relationships and mini-dramas amongst the bloated cast never rise above the mundane.

Keep your eyes open for an early appearance by Ed Begley Jr as Rescuer #1. Like many films of the era, the studio also cut together an extended version for TV broadcasts that added even more subplots and characters, played by the likes of Jose Ferrer, J.D. Cannon and Alan Fudge, but the version I watched was the original.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (84.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: FLAC 1.0
#French: DTS 2.0

Info Subtitles