Flight to Fury (1964)

Director: Monte Hellman
Writer: Jack Nicholson, based on a story by Fred Roos and Monte Hellman
Stars: Dewey Mann, Fay Spain and Jack Nicholson

Index: The First Thirty.

This is not a good movie. Let me get that out there right away. However, it’s an interesting movie, the first of four that Jack Nicholson did for director Monte Hellman and the first of a pair shot back to back in the Philippines. It’s also a thoroughly enjoyable movie with an odd charm to it. It’s much more enjoyable than it really has any right to be.

That’s because it’s a cheap pulp flick with an over-complex story built on no background at all and which is reliant on its characters to do a whole lot of things that aren’t believable. It ought to suck royally. However, it grabbed me early and it kept me all the way, even while I acknowledged a host of problems as it went.

For a start, I have no idea where we are and I’m not sure anyone ever tells us. All we know is that it’s a city and a bunch of people in a car watch another man arrive at the docks by taxi, surreptitiously take something from a man on a boat and then leave in another taxi.

They’re interesting characters, at least. The three in the car include a young driver, exotic muscle and a beautiful woman. I recognise the muscle as Vic Diaz, a memorable villain in a lot of memorable Filipino movies. He channels his best Peter Lorre for this one.

Meanwhile, at a casino, Joe Gaines loses at a card table and Jay Wickham buys him a drink. The former is the picture’s star, Dewey Martin. The latter is Jack Nicholson in a white suit and bad moustache. He’s creepy from the outset and he only gets creepier. Joe pulls a local girl, Lei Ling Forsyth, but, while he’s in the shower, Jay emerges from the curtains in her room and strangles her to death. After Joe leaves the cop station and goes back to his room, he finds Jay there waiting for him, asking questions. When Joe catches a flight out of town, Jay’s on the same flight. Damn, he’s suspicious!

This flight is the flight to fury of the title, a small plane with a short passenger list which includes everyone we’ve met thus far (who’s still alive), plus a few others. And damn, these people move around a lot!

There are a bunch of empty seats, but that’s just opportunity for almost everyone to get up at random, wander around the cabin, sit down next to almost anyone else and ask questions, weird ones at that. You won’t be surprised to find that Jay asks the weirdest. The first thing he says to the girl seated next to him is, “Are you interested in death?”

This is almost like a party game, given that many of these people don’t know each other. It would be musical chairs if there was music. I’ve flown in a lot of planes and some of them had a lot of empty seats. Nobody did this.

Nobody wandered into the cockpit to have a conversation with the pilot either, even before 9/11. Of course, this is the Philippines in 1964, so there isn’t an impassable wall between the pilot and his passengers, only a curtain that’s easily brushed aside.

At this point, we start to learn who all these people are, if not what they’re doing yet. Most of them, of course, are after the diamonds and they’re on the plane because the man in that opening scene was its pilot, Al Ross. Maybe he has them with him.

Joe Gaines is just some guy, it seems. He has no idea what’s going on and has just stumbled into this complicated plot without knowing it. Dewey Martin plays him like a TV show lead, with some presence but not enough charisma to be a movie star. He’s capable enough.

Vic Diaz is Lorgren, a gangster of some sort, who later claims that the diamonds belong to him. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t. It isn’t easy to believe anyone here, except Joe Gaines who’s presumably an innocent in all this.

Fay Spain is Destiny Cooper, who’s Lorgren’s mistress. That doesn’t stop her sitting next to Gaines, planting a big kiss on his lips and then leaving, all while her boyfriend’s asleep. That young driver is Rafael, Lorgren’s valet.

Jay Wickham obviously knows all about the diamonds too, but we have no idea about how or why. He’s a complete wildcard in this film and Nicholson has an absolute blast doing so, especially given that he wrote the story and could tailor his character any way he liked.

Also on the plane are Gloria Walsh, the girl seated next to Jay; and a pair of Japanese men who pass the time by playing go. We have no idea who these people are, whether they’re on board for the diamonds or just by coincidence, but the way the script is playing out, we keep an open mind about them all, even after one of the engines catches fire and they crash land in the Philippine jungle, killing some of them.

From there, you’ll have to see Flight to Fury yourself, because there’s a lot still to come and I don’t want to spoil any of it, but I can talk up a few points without worry because there’s so much ambiguity here about everything.

It’s all about the diamonds, the MacGuffin of the piece, but, while we don’t know anything about them, it seems that neither does anyone else, except perhaps Lorgren. All that matters is that they exist and people are happy to rob, cheat or kill to get them.

That ambiguity extends to the cast. Lorgren surely has to be a gangster, but we don’t know that. We don’t know where he comes from or who he works for. It doesn’t matter. We have a few ideas about Wickham but nothing’s set in stone. We’re just extrapolating his creepiness.

Gaines is the lead, but we have no idea what he does or what he did. We can guess because of certain actions he takes after the crash but we don’t know. Apparently it doesn’t matter.

The two Japanese men clearly have history and there’s a real story behind the actions of one of them late in the movie. However, we’re not let in on that story. It’s up to us to guess.

By the end of the film, we know little more about anyone or anything than we did at the beginning. Is that what a script should do? So much intrigue, so much death and the world carries on regardless, blissfully unaware of it. Is that a meaningful statement by Nicholson? Ask a Magic 8 Ball. It knows as much as I do.

Nicholson is fun here, in all the wrong ways. Some of his best known roles are psychopaths, so it shouldn’t shock that he’d write himself a role as a psychopath here, even one without a single background detail, at least one we can trust, let alone a full origin story. That’s for us to conjure up in our imaginations.

So this really isn’t a good movie. I gave it an OK rating, but I have to temper that by saying that I enjoyed it a great deal. In a very weird way.