Synopsis: At twice the speed of sound, the Concorde must evade a vicious attack by a traitorous arms smuggler.
Stars: Alain Delon, Robert Wagner, George Kennedy, Susan Blakely, Sylvia Kristel, Eddie Albert, Bibi Andersson, Charo, John Davidson, Martha Raye, Cicely Tyson, David Warner, Jimmie Walker, Sybil Danning, Mercedes McCambridge, Avery Scheiber, Monica Lewis, Ed Begley Jr.
Director: David Lowell Rich
Rated: PG
Running Length: 113 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: David Lowell Rich’s franchise-killer delivers two movies’ worth of absurd spectacle for the price of one, a gaudy, ridiculous finale that’s more entertaining than it has any right to be.
Review:
By 1979, disaster movies were running on fumes. So The Concorde… Airport ’79, the fourth and final film in the Airport series, did the only logical thing: it went completely off the rails… while flying at twice the speed of sound.
This is the Fast & Furious entry of the franchise — logic-defying, globe-trotting, and wildly committed to spectacle over sanity. The plot involves an arms-dealing CEO (Robert Wagner, slick as a Bond villain) trying to blow up his journalist ex-girlfriend (Susan Blakely) because she might expose his crimes. She’s on the Concorde. So he sends… a drone. Then a jet fighter. Then a guy to sabotage the cargo door mid-flight. It’s basically WarGames meets Dynasty at 60,000 feet.
And yes, George Kennedy is back — not as a mechanic this time, but as Captain Joe Patroni, Concorde pilot and somehow Vietnam war vet. In case you forgot, he couldn’t legally taxi a plane in Airport (1970). Now he’s barrel-rolling a supersonic jet to evade heat-seeking missiles. Continuity be damned, Kennedy is fully committed, and honestly, he’s the best part of this madness.
He’s joined in the cockpit by Alain Delon playing it cool as Captain Paul Metrand. They’re flying a plane full of eccentrics, including Sylvia Kristel as a saucy flight attendant/love interest, Cicely Tyson carrying a human heart in a cooler, Martha Raye needing a bathroom, and Charo — yes, Charo — smuggling a dog. Somewhere between Paris and Moscow, a hatch blows off, half the plane rips apart, and they land on a ski slope. Because of course they do.
This movie makes zero sense. And yet, it’s never boring. Eric Roth (who would later write Forrest Gump and Dune: Part One, no kidding) pens a screenplay that feels like three scripts smashed together. Is it corporate thriller? Action flick? Soap opera? Doesn’t matter. It’s everything, all at once, with disco energy and a Lalo Schifrin score that fully commits to the absurdity.
Kino Lorber’s 4K UHD transfer is impressively sharp, considering the film was shot flat and plagued with dodgy VFX. The Dolby Vision HDR breathes life into the Concorde’s white fuselage and deepens the black levels for those missile sequences (which are… charmingly fake). The extras — including a commentary from Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson — provide great context, trivia, and affectionate roasting.
The Concorde… Airport ’79 is a glorious mess. It’s not good, but it’s never dull. It’s the kind of film you watch slack-jawed, half-laughing, half-wondering how this ever got made. In the end, it’s a fittingly wild finale for a franchise that started with a snowstorm and ends with missile-dodging at Mach 2.
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