The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981) on Netflix
PG19811h 40mAdventureCrimeDrama
A hijacker leaps from an airliner with a ransom and parachutes into Washington State woods. He is Jim Meade, an army veteran, and Bill Gruen, his former sergeant, hunts him.
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- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.6/101,685 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1971 a hijacker jumps from the rear exit of an airliner and parachutes into a forest in Washington State. The man is Jim Meade, a military veteran, and he escapes the manhunt in a Jeep he had hidden in the woods, hiding the money he stole inside a deer carcass. He meets Hannah, his estranged wife, who operates a river rafting company. Bill Gruen, an insurance investigator who was Meade's army sergeant, and Remson, Meade's army buddy, are hunting him.
Cast
- Karen Newhouseas Girl Friend in Stream
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To generate publicity for the film, Universal Pictures offered a one-million-dollar reward for information leading to the capture and arrest of the real D. B. Cooper, the hijacker whose 1971 escape inspired the story; nobody ever claimed the money.
- Editor-director Roger Spottiswoode was brought in to shoot a major new stunt and re-edit the film; he argued it was "doomed" unless he could shoot new sequences written by Ron Shelton, and the Spottiswoode-Shelton scenes make up about 70% of the finished film.
- Robert Mulligan, the film's initial director, was allegedly fired because he took seven days to shoot the whitewater rapids chase.
- John Frankenheimer, who called the film "probably my worst-ever experience", said a key member of the chain of command had been lying to management and to him, so they all thought they were making a different movie.
- The hijacking was filmed with a Boeing 727 leased from World Airways and painted in a fictitious Northern Pacific livery, photographed by pilot Clay Lacy from his Learjet, with four professional parachutists jumping from the plane's rear exit stairs.
