Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Cortechba Overrated

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

zardoz-13 "Airport '77" director Jerry Jameson's methodical reenactment of Charles Whitman's infamous sniper spree in Austin, Texas, back in 1966, that left sixteen citizens dead and another 32 wounded provided affable Disney star Kurt Russell his first major dramatic role. You've never seen Russell like he is here, and his performance is notably taciturn. Before he climbed atop the tower at the University of Austin campus, Whitman stabbed his mother as well as his wife to death. As usual for a Hollywood made-for-television feature, scenarist William Douglas Lansford and writer Antonio Calderón have played fast and loose with the facts. Hispanic Austin Policeman, Ramiro Martinez (Richard Yniguez of "Cancel My Reservation"), was one of the cops who ultimately stormed the tower and killed Whitman. Actually, none of Martinez's bullets killed Whitman. Nevertheless, in the name of political correctness and diversity, the producers probably appropriated his ethnicity to make things compelling. Interestingly enough, by the time that Whitman started blasting away at random targets, an army of private citizens armed with their own rifles turned out in numbers to retaliate with their own hailstorm of bullets. Meantime, Whitman did not discriminate in his choice of targets, but Jameson couldn't depict this murderer in too harsh a light since "The Deadly Tower" was a made-for-television movie. For example, Whitman pulls a knife on his mother and wife, but Jameson doesn't show this psycho carving either woman up. Indeed, he doesn't lay a finger on his cute little puppy. Jameson cross-cuts between Whitman and Martinez. The day that Whitman launched his one-man massacre, Martinez had learned grudgingly that the department refused to promote him to the rank of sergeant. John Forsythe, Pernell Roberts, and Clifton James play Austin cops in supporting roles as everybody mobilizes for the situation. Jameson maintains tension, suspense, and atmosphere throughout this competently made, 92-minute, crime thriller without resorting to obligatory blood and gore. Furthermore, he doesn't let an abundance of plot hinder the action. Russell is particularly outstanding because he had never played such a homicidal hellion. In real life, Whitman wore sneakers, while the producers showed our protagonist polishing his Marine boots with fetish-like appreciation. Quite possibly, the producers added this fascination with boot leather because the sniper that Andrew Robinson played in the theatrical feature "Dirty Harry" wore paratrooper jump boots and kept them gleaming. Of course, Jameson and his writers take the opportunity to slip in some anti-gun rhetoric. As far as made-for-television movies rate, "The Deadly Tower" qualifies as one of the best despite some of its anti-gun propaganda.

Coventry Charles Whitman was a dangerously disturbed but nevertheless deeply fascinating individual. Arguably even the most fascinating murderer in recent American history. Whitman can't really be referred to as an authentic serial killer, but due to his mariners' background and reputedly high IQ, he can't just be dismissed as an ordinary madman on a rampage, neither. The full reason why Whitman went up the Austin University tower on the 1st of August 1966 and caused a terrible bloodbath will probably never be revealed. Were it the insupportable headaches that Whitman repeatedly complained about and the brain tumor found in his head during the autopsy, or did he snap because of other personal reasons? "The Deadly Tower" is a sober but very compelling and intense re-telling of the events that occurred on that horrible day, when Whitman killed 16 people and wounded over 40 more with his shot and sniper guns. This is the second film I've seen regarding the subject, after Peter Bogdanovich's "Targets". Whereas that film was merely a statement regarding the alienation of youth and the largely uncontrolled weapon legislation, "The Deadly Tower" is a very truthful reconstruction of the facts. In an aptly stone cold manner, Kurt Russell (until then only known from silly Disney comedies like "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" and "The Barefoot Executive") depicts Whitman from the day before the massacre until the moment when Texas police officers shot him dead. Prior to going up the tower, Whitman murdered his mother and wife, went out to buy an arsenal of artillery and – knowing very well he wouldn't return – wrote a suicide note. The film is slow-paced but moody, atmospheric and very suspenseful. Given the fact it's a made-for-TV, and out of respect for the victims and their families, "The Deadly Tower" isn't a very bloody or exploitative thriller. The emphasis lies on inhumanity of the crime and solidarity/collaboration of the people downstairs – police officers as well as civilians – to stop the killer. Jerry Jameson, the director of "Airport 77", does a professional job and the supportive cast including Clifton James and Ned Beatty deliver admirable performances.

Raegan Butcher When Charles Whitman did his psycho-sniper act in 1966 it seemed like an unfathomable act of total madness and a one-of a kind nightmarish freak occurrence. Flash forward to the 21st century and see the depressing regularity with which American men nut-up and start killing people.At the time this played on TV Kurt Russell was known only from his appearances in light-hearted Disney comedies, so it must have been unnervingly effective to see him going off the deep end, sweating and approaching his sleeping mother with a knife clenched in his hand( he never says a word in the film) and then calmly loading up his arsenal for the trip to the bell tower.It is an amazingly dark role and kudos to the producers for casting him against type.This is a very low-key approach to a fairly hair-raising true story. Kudos all around.

tostinati This is pretty much what you expect for the time. There is a fair amount of the pedantic attitude that plagued a lot of TV of the 70s in general. I chalk it up to this: After decades of not being able to say words like "pregnant" on TV, concede cultural differences or problems between races, or generally "act real", TV did so with a vengence in this liberated decade after All In The Family. To make a "message" film or TV show was as essential to auteurs and actors of the decade as beads and smoke were at the front end, and polyester leisure suits with Boeing 747 collars were at the back end of the decade. Today, it seems to us that they were all only stating the obvious, that writers and directors and actors who were certain they had a divinely inspired insight had nothing more than a been-there-done-that brain fart. There was a lot of, as the Bard says, protesting too much. Morals to the story were the order of the day. "People should get along with each other." "Killing is wrong." "People should be tenderer, and more forgiving." Well duh. Into this environment comes an old (but interesting) news story about a troubled guy who comes unhinged one day and goes on a killing spree. The novelty is in the way he did it: sniping people as they went about their daily business hundreds of yards away, from a tower, with a high-powered scope rifle. In 1966 Charles Whitman had staged a one-man seige in Texas that made Rambo's little donniebrook with the local constabulary, a few years later, look as mild as Joe Average tearing up an out-of-town parking ticket. TV of the 70s, being what is was and is, took one tack: Why of course, it's the gun control issue again, in another guise. One can fairly hear the intonations of some producer as he sells the network on this subject "I conclude, gentlemen, our message is that guns cause misery." And not one "Well duh" in the bunch. This, after all, was the 70s, when the crazy twin mojo of auteurism and "relevance" seems to have made any crock of doodoo salable to the powers that were.Kurt Russell is as good as always. (One could see Jan Michael Vincent in the same role, and I bet lot of people probably remember him as Charles Whitman, instead of Russell.) The script is a drag. Mediocre. --You pick the adjective. This story could be made into a compelling film in any decade. The combination of parental abuse and intense perfectionism, and being taunted with impunity by every authority figure he came in contact with, seems to have destroyed the inner life of the real life Whitman. This film conveys that pretty well, and it is at it's best in the first half. The denouement is of course absorbing, but overall there is a laxity in production that, compared to today's films, makes this, like a lot of 70s TV and film, seem thrown together. (Too much use of optical zoom; no attention to production values, with every bit of wardrobe and location and studio set seeming like a Dragnet loan-out.) When you are on a mission, I guess you can't let the details get in the way.