Harry Walker (David Janssen) is a helicopter traffic reporter in Salt Lake City who's never quite gotten over the time he spent flying during World War II -- a former combat pilot, he sees the world passing him by amid complacency and his own life reduced to boredom and bittersweet nostalgia for the best of times, when he was working for a cause that mattered (and there were causes that mattered). He chances on a brutal armored car robbery and helps the police give chase, and suddenly finds himself in the thick of the action when the robbers -- who have taken a woman hostage -- switch from a getaway car to a chopper. And when the getaway chopper tries to ram him, that's all it takes to get Walker into a cross-country aerial pursuit into the Utah desert in a duel to the death. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
"What do you think it is out there, some kind of a game?" asks police detective Jim McAndrew (Ralph Meeker) of traffic helicopter reporter Harry Walker (David Janssen). "Yeah, and it's the only game in town," Walker replies, as he pursues a murderous band of bank robbers. That sums up the character of the hero in this surprisingly rewarding made-for-television film, which will please action-adventure fans with its impressive and extensive flying sequences and helicopter combat sequence, but which also contains some interesting character details. Janssen's Walker is a man who longs for the one time in his life when he felt he was accomplishing something, as a young pilot during World War II -- he listens to late '30s and early '40s pop and jazz, and wears a World War II pilot's jacket while flying on his one-man traffic helicopter job. And he's up against a trio of Vietnam vets-turned-bank robbers, who wear long hair and have beards and could pass for Weather Underground-types if this movie had been made, say, two years earlier. Either way, the generational conflict is set up, a combat pilot of one era, with his tarnished visions of honor and romance, up against a crack team of veterans 30 years younger, who are pretty cavalier about committing murder. One wishes that Walker didn't quote Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca to a hostage that he rescues, as it belabors a point, but the makers have been pretty clever in their use of period details elsewhere. When Walker is racing along in hot pursuit, the soundtrack uses a portion of what sounds like the extended break section of the Benny Goodman version of "Sing Sing Sing" and elsewhere we get snatches of late '30s jazz-based pop. Meeker and Elayne Heilveil (playing Teresa Jane, the hostage) have the only other two developed roles, and Meeker's is the better one, as a contemporary of Walker's who is a little more at peace with the passage of time. Overall, this is the kind of surprising made-for-television feature that used to turn up in the early '70s, not quite good enough to have been a theatrical movie, but good enough to have been a B-movie that outclassed the top-of-the-bill A-film with which it would have been paired. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Cast
Elayne Heilveil - Teresa Jane; David Janssen - Harry Walker; Harry Klekas - Slater; Ralph Meeker - Jim McAndrew; Don Wilbanks - Trucker; Sam Dawson - Sinclair
Credit
William A. Graham - Director, Jack Elliott - Composer (Music Score), Allyn Ferguson - Composer (Music Score), Jordan S. Cronenweth - Cinematographer, Robert Boris - Screenwriter
