The High and the Mighty

The High and the Mighty follows Dan Roman, a veteran pilot whose career has been shaped by a tragic past. Now flying as co-pilot on a routine passenger service from Honolulu to San Francisco, he finds the flight thrown into crisis when mechanical trouble strikes over the Pacific, beyond the point where turning back is an option. As the aircraft struggles on toward the mainland, the crew and the passengers on board confront the possibility that they may not reach it.

William A. Wellman directed the film, the fifteenth of the sixteen features he made, arriving between Westward the Women and Lafayette Escadrille. Ernest K. Gann wrote the screenplay, and John Wayne, who also produced with Robert Fellows, leads the cast as Roman, with Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack, Jan Sterling and Phil Harris among the credited players, thirty-five in all. Made for about a million dollars, the picture runs 147 minutes and mixes action and adventure with drama and suspense.

Opinion on the film is divided. On IMDb it holds 6.6/10 from around 7,100 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 5.9/10 from a much smaller group of 90. A critics' rating of 6.3/10 from 13 reviews places critical response close to the audience scores.