There is a snow storm at Chicago's Lincoln International Airport. Manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is working hard to handle all the emergencies. There is a demonstration against the new runway that flies over a neighborhood. He calls in mechanic Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) to pull out a plane stuck in the snow. D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) intends to blow up his plane in the air so that his wife Inez (Maureen Stapleton) could collect the life insurance money. Captain Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) keeps pushing the airport to run faster and pushes the pilot to take off. Stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset) is on board and is pregnant with the married Demerest's baby. Mrs. Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes) is an expert stowaway.
The movie has a lot of character minutiae before it gets to the drama. The cast is amazing and Helen Hayes probably won the Oscar for her body of work. The acting suffers from the scale which overshadows everything. There are too many stories to follow. I don't care about most of them. It's rather boring for much of the movie. It's a big movie that doesn't generate enough tension. I am also uncertain whether to praise its influence in starting the 70s disaster movie craze or to hate it for the camp that most of that genre represent. This is not a terribly compelling movie until they get on the plane. Basically the last half is a good disaster movie but the first half is boring as hell.
The movie has a lot of character minutiae before it gets to the drama. The cast is amazing and Helen Hayes probably won the Oscar for her body of work. The acting suffers from the scale which overshadows everything. There are too many stories to follow. I don't care about most of them. It's rather boring for much of the movie. It's a big movie that doesn't generate enough tension. I am also uncertain whether to praise its influence in starting the 70s disaster movie craze or to hate it for the camp that most of that genre represent. This is not a terribly compelling movie until they get on the plane. Basically the last half is a good disaster movie but the first half is boring as hell.