The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

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Audience Member Roger Spottiswoode directed everything from Terror Train, Under Fire and Shoot to Kill to Turner & Hooch, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, The Sixth Day and Tomorrow Never Dies. This movie originally had John Frankenheimer* as the director, but he was replaced by Buzz Kulik, the director of Bad Ronald. The script was written by an uncredited W.D. Richter (Jeffrey Alan Fiskin has the credit) and was based on the book Free Fall: A Novel by J.D. Reed. After getting the finished film, the producers felt like it needed a stunt and some editing, so editor-director Roger Spottiswoode came in. However, Spottiswoode claimed that without new sequences, the movie would fail. He brought in Ron Shelton, a former baseball player who would later write and direct Bull Durham. Together, they'd reshoot 70% of the movie, according to "Ghostwriters" in the March/April 1983 issue of Film Comment. It seems like two movies got made: Kulik's is a post-Vietnam movie in which Cooper is angered that he gains more fame as a thief than he did as a soldier, while the Spottiswoode movie is a chase film. What do you do when you have a troubled production? You William Castle things. Universal offered a million dollars for any information that would lead to the capture and arrest of the real D.B. Cooper, totally missing the message that Cooper was the hero of their film and no one who saw him that way in the movie would want to see him in jail. No one ever claimed the prize. So who is Cooper, the man who anonymously hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft between Portland and Seattle, got a ransom of $200,000, then jumped out and disappeared, with his crime being the only unsolved air piracy in commercial aviation history? Treat Williams, who plays an army man named Jim Meade trying to impress his wife, played by Kathryn Harrold. He won't get away easy, as Sgt. Bill Gruen (Robert Duvall), his old military boss, is now an insurance investigator. Another man from the war past, Remson (Paul Gleason), is also after him, as he recalls discussing highjacking with Meade. *Frankenheimer was fired after one scene was shot, telling the Los Angeles Times that this movie was "…probably my worst-ever experience. A key member in the chain of command had been lying to both management and myself with the result that we all thought we were making a different movie" Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member Too bad they didn’t cover anything of the known facts prior to the jump - and just based the whole movie on pure speculation of ‘after the fact’ fiction. I enjoyed it more as a kid in the 80s watching it on HBO… not so much anymore Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Not a bad little movie. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/24/23 Full Review Audience Member boring plot that never goes anywhere a fictional db cooper getting chased by everyone in there cousin for his money through out the whole film no logic or crazy turns through this one folks Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member After the heist and jump from the jet a insurance adjuster finds out that the thief is a man he trained in the army paratroopers. starts tracking him through his wife. Duval did a good job in this a early roll for him he was the adjuster Williams is a actor that i like a lot and most of the movies I have seen him in I have enjoyed and this is a good one also Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Saw this movie way back in the 80's on a free preview of the Movie channel in Canada. It was so good I watched it a bunch more times during the free period. Oh how I wish I had recorded it on my VCR. Dang. Treat Williams is a great actor and makes a fantastic D.B. Cooper! Robert Duval is excellent as always as the insurance adjusted who chases him all over the back woods of Washington State. All in all a great movie and should easily stand the test of time. On a side note with the renewed interest in D.B. Cooper sparked by the recent new and credible lead in the only unsolved hijacking in U.S. History I imagine we will be seeing a new DVD release in the near future! Fingers Crossed! Hans Idle www.youtube.com/irlnewz Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

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