Fate Is the Hunter (1964)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Captivating movie !

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Sam McBane is an executive at Consolidated Airlines. One of Consolidated's passenger planes crashes shortly after takeoff, killing 53 people on board. There is only one survivor, a stewardess. The pilot of the plane was Captain Jack Savage, a long- time friend of Sam's. Sam and Jack flew transport planes together in WW2. Jack was a playboy, and the press are painting him as as irresponsible and undisciplined...and the cause of the crash. Consolidated's CEO and other executives are quite happy to go along with this view, as it makes Jack Savage the sole cause of the crash and absolves them from blame. However, Sam knows better and sets out to find the truth, and hopefully clear his friend.Quite original, in background and ultimate plot. The idea of fate/luck being the cause, rather than anyone's fault, isn't something that gets explored often. In fact, nowadays it is quite a radical notion as in our litigious, blame-finding society people always want to find something or someone, other than themselves, to blame for their misfortunes.Very engaging too, as we see the Sam and Jack's history in WW2 and get to know Jack (especially) and Sam's characters.Was set up for a very profound ending but, while it was practical and satisfying, it really could have done with something more philosophical. The end result felt a bit clumsy and devalued the bigger point to an extent.Overall, a very good movie but could have been brilliant.

It seems like there is always someone who has to come along and tell us how this or that could not happen. For example, a pilot setting a cup of coffee on an instrument panel during takeoff. Oh come on! What would we, the mindless minions do without the superior intellect of reviewers like this to tell us what we actually already know? Please spare boring us with your pseudo-intelligence people.Another thing I'd like to see is reviewers that would stop retelling the story line. Come on people... we know the story. If that is all you have to offer, please sit down and hush. Can't you look deeper into the art and give us a real nugget? Some reviews were very good. I especially liked the one which introduced us to the concept of multivariate statistics. I did a little reading on that. This movie played on that concept quite a bit. I could be wrong but it seems to me that one way to explain it is using rogue waves as an example. A little wave here and there is nothing and a boat could easily handle them but at some point all the little waves could come together and add up to a disaster.I got this movie for two reasons: I like Glenn Ford and I like airplanes. Perhaps this movie would make a good object lesson for an acting school somewhere. There were parts of Ford's performance that were great and it did not register that the man was acting. In other parts it seemed obvious he was posing for the camera. I'm thinking about it now and I think Ford would have been a great actor to play Harry Bosch in one of Michael Connelly's novels. Ford's mood and noir might go together well to make a Bosch. I've read a little about Ford and he sounded like a stand-up guy. I would think he might feel embarrassed in his profession by people today like Charles Sheen. Sheen would be a good object lesson for anyone thinking about taking drugs for the first time (or second, or third, etc) For you aviation buffs out there trying to reverse engineer the plane in the movie... I read on one website that the movie producers very deliberately made up some plane that looked like nothing else that existed. They did not want to have to deal with possible lawsuits so to those of you who are trying to impress us with your aviation knowledge... stop boring us. Go work for Airbus if you're so smart.Taylor and Pleshette played together in "The Birds." I forgot that until I saw the credit material at the end. Kwan gave me just enough that I'd like to see other movies she has been in. Maybe Mark Stevens (Mickey) as well. I think the movie did a good job in the aspect of character development. In the end I missed Jack Savage and wanted to meet "his friends" at the closing credits.

This movie is one of my all-time favorites that I'm happy to share tonight with my movie-buff husband who has never seen it. (I'll bet Tony DiNozzo would remember it, though.) I've been trying to remember the title for ages (couldn't recall Rod Taylor's last name to look it up online. Getting senile I guess.)I agree with Roscoe-4. "It illustrates the many zany and unusual things that can happen to change our lives forever." The actual cause of this plane crash has stuck with me since I first saw the film over 30 years ago on TV. Many times I have caught myself in the midst of a possible negative chain-of-events and changed something I was doing because of this movie (especially if there was a cup of coffee involved in what I was doing). It also probably lead to my interest in Multivariate Statistics (quantification of the phenomenon of multiple variables leading to a single outcome.)Personally, I think everyone should see this film. At least it tells a person to keep looking deeper for causes instead of assuming that "what you think is accurate" is also worth believing just because "it makes sense" to you. "It makes sense" should never be enough by itself to lead us all the way to a conclusion.

Ernest K. Gann's book becomes interesting, somewhat unusual and gripping drama involving a doomed airliner, on a routine flight from Los Angeles to Seattle, which loses its first engine--and then, apparently, its second--and crashes just after takeoff, leaving only one survivor (a remarkably uninjured stewardess). Glenn Ford is the investigator for the airline company who is pressured by board members into blaming the entire disaster on pilot Rod Taylor, an old military friend; Ford is uninterested in using the pilot as a scapegoat, instead putting his job on the line and searching out the actual reason the plane went down. Many issues this film brings up are still remarkably relevant today (pilot error, bird feathers jamming the engine, the possibility of a bomb), yet director Ralph Nelson stages some of the more dramatic sequences like cheapjack incidents from a TV serial. The cockpit action (including flashbacks to the war) is highly unconvincing, and the picture is further handicapped by disappointing visual effects. Ford's low-key work holds the movie together, and he's matched by Suzanne Pleshette, Nancy Kwan, and Nehemiah Persoff (playing an associate of Ford's who is eager to have his job). Taylor is too 'colorful' and overdoes it, and the flashback structure renders the film episodic, though the finale is good (if far-fetched) and the nasty politics of airline business are successfully brought off. **1/2 from ****