MOVIE QUIZ
Fifty years ago next Wednesday – Nov. 24, 1971, also a Thanksgiving Eve that year – D.B. Cooper jumped out of a plane over southwestern Washington state with $200,000 in ransom money and jumped into American mythology. The fact that D.B. Cooper was a miscommunicated news reporting of the hijacker’s "real" name, Dan Cooper (which was itself an alias), only added to the irresistible mystery.
Also enhancing the allure? No trace of Cooper, or his body, or the parachute, or more than $5,880 of the ransom was ever recovered. His true identity was never deduced, despite investigations into more than 1,000 credible suspects, and the FBI never officially closed the case until 2016. It remains the only unsolved instance of commercial air piracy in history.
Ten years after the unsolved crime, it inspired the movie, “The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper,” starring Treat Williams and Robert Duvall. That’s just one of many films dealing with skyjacking. Some are fictional thrillers, some are inspired by fact-based tragedies like 9/11 or the raid on Entebbe airport. And several are collected below in this week’s movie quiz.
1. In 1997’s “Air Force One,” the famous plane belonging to the U.S. president (Harrison Ford) is taken over by a band of terrorists led by Gary Oldman. But what multioscar-nominated actress beat Kamala Harris to the punch by 23 years and played the country’s first female vice-president?
2. What 1990 sequel – the 318th-biggest movie of all time when adjusted for inflation – effectively hijacks hundreds of planes when terrorists take over the air traffic control system at Washington Dulles International Airport?
3. True or false: Brazilian director José Padilha, whose most recent film was 2018’s “7 Days in Entebbe” about the 1976 hijacking and subsequent rescue mission of a plane bound from Tel Aviv to Paris, started his career helming the 2002 documentary “Bus 174” about a gunman who took the passengers on a Rio de Janeiro bus hostage in 2000.
4. The over-the-top 1997 action flick “Con Air” starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich involves a paroled ex-con returning home on a prisoner transport plane where the outlaw passengers seize control. What two female country singers had simultaneous hit singles with their own versions of the movie’s love theme, “How Do I Live?”
5. Match these hijack-themed movies with their casts: A. “Executive Decision” B. “Non-stop” C. “Passenger 57” D. “Turbulence”
I. Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong ’o II. Wesley Snipes, Tom Sizemore, Elizabeth Hurley III. Ray Liotta, Lauren Holly, Brendan Gleeson IV. Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal, Halle Berry
6. Paul Greengrass scored an Oscar nomination for directing 2006’s “United 93,” depicting what occurred on board the one plane out of four hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, that never reached the terrorists’ target thanks to the intervention of passengers. Seven years later he was behind the camera again for another ripped-from-theheadlines kidnapping drama, but this time it was a boat in the Indian Ocean that was overtaken. What was the movie?
7. Lee Marvin’s final film, 1986’s “The Delta Force” loosely inspired by the real hijacking of TWA Flight 847 the year before, was top-billed by which 1980s action star as the co-leader of the title special ops team? A. Sylvester Stallone B. Chuck Norris C. Arnold Schwarzenegger D. Charles Bronson
8. “Snakes on a Plane” showcases a novel type of hijacking: hundreds of venomous snakes stowed away in time-release luggage designed to take down a red eye carrying a witness in a mob murder case. Samuel L. Jackson stars as the FBI agent protecting the witness and he utters the film’s iconic line, one that can’t be repeated in a family newspaper. But when the 2006 movie was eventually shown on TV, the line was infamously and ridiculously redubbed. Fill in the blank: “I have had it with these (blank)-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-friday plane!”
9. The 2004 Sean Penn drama “The Assassination of Richard Nixon,” involving a disgruntled salesman who plots to hijack a passenger airline in 1974 and crash it into the White House, is a fictional plot, yes or no?
10. The second sequel to 1970’s “Airport,” “Airport ’77,” begins with the hijacking of a private Boeing 747 and ends with the passengers struggling to survive after the plane crashes into what allegedly mysterious ocean location “popular” in the 1970s?