Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

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

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Robert J. Maxwell Some fine performances from James Coburn and some of the rest of the cast, plus picturesque Greek locations, can't provide the thermal that would lift this out of the abyss of the gimmick movie.At heart, it's a routine film of a millionaire's family being kidnapped and then rescued by Coburn and half a dozen hang glider pilots from a circus troupe. We get to know the millionaire, Robert Culp, and the kidnapped wife, Susannah York, because they are familiar figures. We also get to know the local chief of police, Charles Aznevour, a Greek with a French accent. Except for John Beck, who heads the circus troupe and teaches Coburn how to fly and whose chin seems to be a granite massif, the other flyers are faceless and nameless, although they too are risking their lives in a daring assault on the ex monastery where York and her two kids are being held.The opening scene has the villains bursting into Culp's Greek mansion and shooting down all the servants before making off with York and the kids. The ransom is five million dollars. Culp, a nice cooperative guy, is willing to pay but hasn't got five million bucks. No matter because the whole ransom business is dropped from the plot anyway, eclipsed by a long and chaotic shoot out at the monastery.The editing really is execrable. So is the screenplay. Coburn seems to learn how to fly a hang glider in five minutes under Beck's tutelage. York doesn't get any lessons at all but can still take the controls during the escape when her companion is wounded. Oddly enough, the movie is built around the use of the hang gliders, which were a novelty at the time. (Earlier novelties included wet suits and Scuba diving; viz., "The Wreck of the Mary Deare," "Thunderball." Later, there were sky divers.) Yet the shots of the hang gliders aren't thrilling, as they should be. Much of it is at night. And the images of mountainous landscapes are jumbled and rolled about carelessly.After the escape is effected and the monastery is under assault from a horde of Greek astynomia, led by Aznavour, who has even given Robert Culp a rifle and dragged him along, some of the hang gliders circle back to the monastery, when they could easily head straight away from the area of danger. The gliders are unarmed but they keep flying around and providing convenient targets for the villains' machine guns.However, for all its flaws, it's a thought-provoking film. The thought it provokes is that no power on earth could ever get me to leave the ground in one of those flimsy contraptions.

blanche-2 James Coburn, Susannah York and Robert Culp star in "Sky Riders," an action film from 1976. Culp's family is kidnapped by terrorists, and Coburn, who is the ex-husband of York and the father of her son, steps in to help. With the help of a photograph of the family sent by the terrorists, he manages to trace their location to an abandoned monastery. The only way to get there unseen is overhead, as it lays on the top of a huge rock formation. Coburn brings in experienced hang-gliders to help him.Some really nice scenery and hang-gliding sequences are the highlight of this film, along with a good performance by Coburn. The characters aren't really fleshed out, nor are the circumstances of York leaving Coburn for Culp. It's hinted at through the dialogue that Culp wanted to marry York, and in exchange for not fighting the divorce, Culp used his influence to get Coburn less prison time. The boy in the family doesn't know who Coburn is, so the marriage happened when he was very young. There was some rich character material there, but it's not played out in the script.Ordinary.

ceqa02 The movie starts with machinegun-toting terrorists killing the hired help and kidnapping a wife and child. The husband seeks his wife's former husband's help in getting them back. The gang's hideout territory scenery is breathtaking, an abandoned and isolated monastery in mountainous Greece. The inside of the monastery depicts ancient Christian Orthodox iconography. Coburn lines up a travelling troupe of circus-act type hang gliger performers to teach him how to fly. These are the early design of hang gliders, with a rogallo wing design. The rogallo wing consists of fabric stretched out in a triangle over two leading-edge hollow aluminum spars, with another aluminum tube for a spine, and another for a cross bar, and a lower metal loop for the dangling pilot to grip and steer by. Very much like a modern delta-style steerable kite. These were dangerous but beautiful designs, which are capable of going into a stall and nose dive, straight into the ground from a thousand feet up if you are not careful and experienced, but a delight to watch in flight. Before he approaches them, Coburn watches the travelling aerialists' circus-style open-air act, as the heartstoppingly colorful hang gliders perform aerial maneuvers with breathtaking poise and beauty. There's a pretty girl in the troup. One flyer pretends to lose his grip and plummets dozens of feet into a nearby body of water while his pilotless hang glider drifts lazily down without him. So Coburn approaches them and asks to be taught how to pilot one. Somewhere along the line, while learning to fly, Coburn gets casual and cozy, and proposes to the performers that they join him in the rescue. "If we fail," you get your money back," the teacher volunteers. "Right!" Coburn grins skeptically and knowingly, to which the others laugh. Coburn isn't bitter, but he's no fool, and suddenly they have all been won over to his side and looking at the challenge as a team. Like I said, Coburn at his best. From there on, it's a class act as Coburn and the aerialists make a stealth infiltration of the sky-high monastery via hang glider, and seek to get the woman and child out and escape again on their hang gliders before the terrorists can discover and stop them.

Poseidon-3 As the old stripper in "Gypsy" says, "Ya gotta have a gimmick!" This action film's gimmick is that the only way to stage an imperative rescue is via hang glider! Culp plays an official living in Greece whose wife York and their two children are taken hostage by a sketchy band of terrorists and held for ransom atop an abandoned monastery. The remote building sits high on a pillar with only similar pillars around it and deep valleys and cliffs as the surrounding terrain. Culp works with the police (led by an almost Clousseu-like Aznavour) while York's first husband (and the natural father of one of the children) Coburn takes a different tack. He pairs up with hang glider expert Beck and his team of specialists to stage a rescue. Coburn isn't bad in his role, though he's hardly challenged by the lame script. York, whose low voice is down there with Vanessa Redgrave's at this point, hasn't got much to do but act worried and ludicrously stand up to her captors. One scene has her sliding to the floor in fear while her terrified preschool daughter lies alone on a cot! Culp tries to convey concern, but his transformation from diplomat into gun-toting savior is rather unrealistic. At least Coburn was already portrayed as a man of action from the start of the film. Even more preposterous is the presentation of the circus performers in Beck's troupe suddenly becoming firearm-trained mercenaries and SWAT-level hostage rescuers in a matter of hours! Always likable Beck has the misfortune of being shown in a silly, grey, sideshow leotard in his first appearance. (One of his gaggle includes Orsatti, best known for plummeting from a table to the lighted ceiling/floor in "The Poseidon Adventure" and appearing in numerous Irwin Allen-produced films before gaining stature as a noted stunt coordinator.) Aznavour is sometimes unintentionally funny in his role as the diminutive, but exacting police chief. Andrews, despite his billing, barley appears at all as a grizzled seafarer. Folks expecting him to figure into the story mustn't hold their breath. Notable 60's personality Zou Zou also barely appears. The chief asset of the film is the spectacular Grecian scenery and the proliferation of location shooting. Also, the shots of the hang gliders in action do provide a modicum of excitement. Unfortunately, a pervading sense of inanity hangs over the film. The opening capture sequence is ridiculously shot. The boy hilariously mouths (while the terrorists are killing virtually everyone on the estate), "They're wearing hockey masks." Since the terrorists kill everyone but the captives, why bother wearing them? They take them off anyway once they reach the monastery!! Then when the big rescue comes, wouldn't someone in charge have noticed that the escape route takes the participants DIRECTLY OVER the place they've just escaped from, thus exposing them to just as much danger as before?? This sort of stupidity goes a long way in decreasing any points the film has scored in the way of star power, interest level or excitement. Still, if one checks his brain before viewing, the film can provide a modestly entertaining diversion.