The weekend John Wayne film fest ends (thankfully) with Island in the Sky, which was probably the best of the four films I viewed.
John Wayne actually looks scared for a change, an acting emotion that was probably new for him. The film is about the search for an air transport plane lost in northern Canada that has to be found before the survivors freeze to death.
The writer Ernest K. Gann adapted his book into a mediocre screenplay. More importantly the director is William Wellman a former World War I fighter pilot for the French and a guy who got his start in silent films. Wellman knows planes and pilots and was apparently a real no nonsense filmmaker who didn't take a lot of crap from actors. This is the kind of direction that John Wayne responded best to, working with a strong willed filmmaker who could get him to push himself a little harder as an actor and not coast on his movie star persona.
Island in the Sky has nice on location photography where Wayne and the cast actually spent some time in the snow freezing. This helps give the film some authenticity. The aerial photography by William Clothier is impressive considering he actually went up in an airplane and filmed these corsairs.
I don't want to overrate this film because what we have here is a well made decent little adventure film that is modest in scope, but tells an interesting story.
109 minutes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment