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

Strong and Moving!

best movie i've ever seen.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An interesting variation on the 'Hollywood Bomber Crew' plot line with strong casting which is puzzling at times; for example by 1965 Ernest Borgnine had built on his breakout role of Fatso Judson in From Here To Eternity and his Oacar-winning Marty and had been prominent in several memorable titles like Bad Day At Black Rock, The Poseidon Adventure etc but here he is killed off in the first half hour, similarly Peter Finch is given little to do whilst people like Dan Duryea and George Kennedy seem to be there only to make up the numbers. The bulk of screen time is shared between James Stewart, Hardy Kruger and Dickie Attenborough who was competent in a part that any Hollywood supporting actor could have played just as well. It's a good example of the Boy's Own Paper School of plotting and holds up reasonably well.

Frank Towns (James Stewart) is flying a oil drilling crew from Jaghbub to Benghazi in Libya. Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough) is the navigator. The plane gets hit with a sandstorm and crash in the middle of the desert. The passengers are British army Capt. Harris (Peter Finch) and Sgt. Watson (Ronald Fraser), Dr. Renaud (Christian Marquand), odd aircraft designer Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Krüger) and from the oil company accountant Mr. Standish, crazy foreman Trucker Cobb (Ernest Borgnine), Ratbags Crow, Carlos with his monkey, Bellamy (George Kennedy) and others. Harris has a plan to walk out. Watson pretends to sprain his leg to avoid the walk and Cobb goes nuts demanding to go along. Dorfmann claims to have a plan to fly out.There are probably way too many characters. Some of the lesser used characters should be left off the plane. Jimmy Stewart's character is way too much of a boy scout. It makes no sense that he goes on a search for Cobb. It puts him completely over the top into unreasonable. As for the plot being unreasonable, that is also a problem but it is a movie after all. With so many great actors, this could be a better character-based thriller.

This is a great movie, where plane crashes in desert, and, well, tough to say "spoiler" , since it is almost 50 yrs old and when the movie title says it all. Not to add that 90% of the movie is directed to this one, and ,as movie goes on, only possible outcome.This is like a Shakespeare play or something as sparse as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" Initially one would call it a 'small' movie.... a few characters and a one set stage. But after watching it, seems like a much bigger stage.It's a good story that allows an amazing ensemble of great actors to strut their stuff. Well, maybe a couple didn't get a chance to fully develop, and one or two might have been a bit 'over the top', but the three keys players were outstanding.May catch hell for this, but I think one of Jimmy's best. What I didn't know till quite a bit after watching this movie for first time, was how much a Flyboy Jimmy was. It was in his DNA. When he said in the movie: "Time was you could take real pride, in just getting there, flying used to be fun Lou, it really was..." You knew that character he was playing and he were one and the same.

A plane crashes in the desert, and the only obvious possibilities of survival are to wait for rescue or to walk to civilization. The survivors know that neither option is likely to succeed, but their ability to agree with one another ends there. Whether you like the movie may depend partly on whether you agree with its "Lord of the Flies"-like premise that, outside of the constraints and comforts of polite society, humans are more likely to conflict with one another than to cooperate. In this film the cooperators, chiefly Richard Attenborough's alcoholic co-pilot and Christian Marquand's worldly doctor, are sympathetic characters whom I wished to see survive the ordeal. I hoped other characters would survive only on the condition that they first became more relatable. Perhaps being stranded in the desert is indeed a more soluble dilemma than the problem of being surrounded by detestable, combative people.