Black Sunday (1977)

What exactly is this Super Bowl? American blimp pilot Michael Lander (Bruce Dern), who has endured the horrors of the Vietnam War, is now psychotic, divorced and ready to die. Hoping to kill himself in grand fashion, he teams with Palestinian terrorist Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller), who plans on using Lander to set off a bomb at the Super Bowl by crashing his aircraft into the crowded stands. With thousands of lives at stake, Israeli military counter-intelligence agent Kabakov (Robert Shaw) teams with the F.B.I. led by Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) in an attempt to stop Lander’s plan for a spectacular mass murder-suicide … You may be superior in this organisation but you are not a woman. Thomas Harris’ controversial if plausible novel (published a couple of years after the Black September massacre at the Munich Olympics) gets a brilliant adaptation courtesy of Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross and Ivan Moffat, who carve a suspenseful, wonderfully marshalled actioner with political elements plus psychologically impressive characterisations. Keller is determined, Weaver is obdurate and in Dern and Shaw we have men who are both terrifically motivated. Both manifest their obsessions in similar if politically opposed fashion – it’s just that Dern is crazy. He has one magnificent scene with Keller that eloquently explains his disintegrating persona. Shaw is known as ‘Final Solution’ within Mossad and it’s this aspect of him that Weaver fears but when Shaw saves his life from Fasil (Bekim Fehmiu) in a fantastically choreographed chase sequence culminating on the beach in Miami they are bound to each other. What marks this out from Nineties terrorist plots (derived from information leaked by disgruntled CIA agents, by all accounts) is that both sides’ motivations are given time – but when Mossad agent Moshevsky (Steven Keats) says I’ve come to see both sides of the question. That is never good, you know he’s for it. It’s beautifully shot by John A. Alonzo and there are only a couple of process images (and in the context of the location in New Orleans you can understand why). There are meta references – seeing Walter Gotell (typically playing a Nazi) and Keller (the daughter of one in real life) playing Palestinians is a nod to the real-life fellow travellers of those Moslems who were the true architects of the Final Solution. Not surprisingly, it was banned in Germany. It’s perfectly paced and constructed and breathtaking from start to finish. Absolutely sensational. Has Shaw ever had to do so much running in one film?! Directed by the great John Frankenheimer who appears briefly in the CBS TV van directing proceedings. Robert Wussler, Pat Summerall and Tom Brookshier appear as themselves. Produced by Robert Evans. This hasn’t been seen on British terrestrial TV for many years following its scheduled screening on 7/7, pulled by BBC due to the Islamist atrocities in London that day. Thanks to Talking Pictures for the opportunity to reassess a great film. Black September does not scare. You either kill or get killed