Sole Survivor

Like so many others who have commented on Sole Survivor I've been haunted by this movie since I was a kid. I only ever saw it once but I guess it stuck in my mind. For years I've tried to find out the name of the movie and today I finally did. Can't tell you how pleased I am right now.I was beginning to convince myself that I'd imagined seeing it at all.It's good to know that there are other people who feel the same way about this movie.

Like everyone else, I first saw this movie only one time on TV as a kid and have been haunted by it ever since (at least 25 years). The ending, of course, is the big magnet that pulls so strongly even decades later, but the guys' dialog as they played baseball must've also struck a chord during the post-Vietnam age when political sentiments were still intense. Like so many others here I've tried searching all kinds of keywords on web searches, with no luck, before finally hitting the right combination today and landing the title in a discussion somewhere - which I immediately double-checked on IMDb. Having confirmed that this is the right film, now I've even found a place in Canada, Lear Media, that has the movie on DVD. I just hope it's not one of the "edited to death" versions that's under so much discussion. (I also hope the rumors about Richard Donnor bringing this back via an Iraq War remake hold true, because that would put the story in very good hands.) My DVD order's in. Ten days from now I'll be watching this excellent movie for the second time in my life!

Sole Survivor is one of the weirder entries in the WWII genre and difficult to classify. Written by Guerdon Trueblood as a TV movie, it tells the tale of a B-24 stranded in the Libyan desert. Comparisons are sometimes made between this and Flight of the Phoenix and shouldn't be, as Sole Survivor really has no thematic equal. Richard Basehart and Vince Edwards are fine in their roles, although Shatner had by this time been typecast as Captain Kirk and can't seem to shake that in his role as Gronke. Fans of Pat Wayne will enjoy a somewhat better performance than his usual, and Lou Antonio was in the middle of a career that spanned multiple decades. For some reason this one is difficult to find, which is a shame as it is absolutely unique and an experience that tends to stay with you long after the closing credits roll.

Five airmen remain with their bomber plane in the middle of the Libyan desert hoping to be rescued. They have crash-landed but something is odd about this scenario. Any time that they start to trek in a certain direction, they always end up at the crash site. It also seems that they have been at the location for 17 years with nothing else to do but play baseball. The day comes when their plane is spotted and Major Vince Edwards (Devlin) and Colonel William Shatner (Josef) are sent to identify the wreckage and produce a report. They take with them General Richard Basehart (Hamner), who was the sixth crew member who parachuted out and survived 17 years ago. When they arrive, they don't see any of the airmen and they start to put their report together. The airmen are definitely there, though! Edwards persists in unravelling the truth.

The inspiration for the setting of the story is the real-life incident involving the bomber plane 'Lady Be Good' which disappeared in 1943 and was spotted in the Libyan desert in 1958. Many details are retained for the film, eg, the intact wreckage and an urn of tea found at the crash site still being drinkable. As for the film, the story is excellently told as we follow two sides – the airmen who seem to be wandering in limbo and the investigators who are trying to piece together what happened. Can the truth be discovered and will the airmen's lives finally be redirected to wherever they need to go?

The acting is good – William Shatner has a few Captain Kirk moments but that is what you want to see - and the ending is memorably done. It's a film that stays with you and keeps you watching for the duration. It also gets you thinking as to what might happen after death. And just who is the sole survivor?

After a B-24 heavy bomber was discovered in the Libyan desert years ago, it inspired this interesting little film. It's about a B-25 (a much smaller bomber) that is discovered in the same desert and it presents an odd sort of mystery...as the surviving crew member was picked up near Sicily...yet the plane crashed into the desert on the other side of the Mediterranean. This makes the story that the survivor (now a General) a complete lie. How could the man have jumped out of a burning plane...yet it continued on its way for hundreds and hundreds of miles?

The way this mystery is presented it VERY novel. For much of the early portion of the film, you see it from the viewpoint of the crew...all alive and huddled around their crashed plane. Soon you realize what's happened...these men are really dead and the men are but ghosts! So, when the plane is discovered and Air Force folks come to investigate, the ghosts are cheering them on--pushing them to uncover the truth. One officer (William Shatner) is in favor of just sweeping everything under the rug, so to speak. The other is anxious to get to the truth (Vince Edwards)...regardless of the consequences. Weird...but very unusual and worth seeing, as I really appreciate innovative film work...and this is very unusual to say the least! Plus, it's very well made and the acting is superb.