This has to be a key progenitor to the modern disaster movie well before the famous Airport series for instance. There are scenes in this repeated with great hilarity in Airplane! too. But here the style is of a serious drama and thriller, as opposed to a comedy, except for the inevitable inadvertent howlers for the contemporary viewer. There's a preponderance of excellent actors at all levels with quite a lot to offer in the now standard character-development phase of the plot -- there are ongoing themes on typical preoccupations of the era like social class prejudice, the destruction of world wars and fears of nuclear apocalypse, and lots on the burgeoning sexual revolution to name a few. With stuff like this the real action and indeed the plausibility of the plot becomes strangely irrelevant. But if one cares to pick the latter apart it's not hard to see wobbly elements like the odd two-level areoplane in the studio when the external shots are of a re-fitted Tuplov Soviet nuclear bomber with just a single deck fuselage. The addition of the "lounge deck" is important in the story, and anyway adds to the feel of specialness and luxury that flight in the 1960s was synonymous with. So, for the excellent drama, and the bits of cultural history alone I give this 9/10 with just a point loss on the plausibility front. Attenborough is excellent as the creepy antagonist.
Review of Jet Storm
