Because kidnapping stories involve many personalities (the kidnappers, the crew, law enforcement, or another person trying to thwart the kidnappers, etc.), the shows and movies surrounding them aren’t just pure thrillers. There is some attempt to connect viewers with the people involved, just to raise the stakes to see if they survive the kidnapping or not. A new Colombian series is a fictional account of a 1973 kidnapping that became the longest in mileage and time in Latin American history.
THE HIKING OF FLIGHT 601: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Initial shot: A woman in a stewardess uniform looks at her wrist, with three dots drawn on it. She has a gun pointed at her head. She alternates with scenes of the same woman, earlier in the timeline, getting ready for work and looking at the blister developing on her heel.
The essence: “Bogotá, 1973”. Edie (Mónica Lopera) struggles to leave her apartment to catch her flight; She is a flight attendant for Aerobolivar and must work on flight 601 from Bogotá. Her three young children are wreaking havoc and the babysitter hasn’t arrived. At one point, her youngest son locks herself in the bathroom and, when Edie comes in, she accidentally knocks out one of her permanent teeth with the door, prompting an emergency visit to the dentist.
The airport is busy as always; two men (Alian Devetac, Valentín Villafañe) are in the parking lot; one holds a cake box, another points a gun at his thigh. They have plans for flight 601. After being weighed by their supervisor Manchola (Marcela Benjumeca) (after all, it is 1973), the Aerobolivar flight attendants (again, 1973) tour the terminal, led by the beautiful Bárbara ( Angela Cano). Barbara makes sure a rookie stewardess, Marisol (Ilenia Antonini), projects the right image, and she also receives rejection from a married pilot with whom she had an affair.
Edie tries to get Barbara to cover for her, but Manchola discovers her and tells her over the phone to be on time or she will lose her job. Edie tries but fails, and Barbara leaves the inexperienced Marisol as the only steward on the flight, claiming that there are only 43 passengers and she should be able to handle it. In the cockpit, Captain Lucena (Christian Tappan) deals with an experienced co-pilot, Lequerica (Johan Rivera).
While Edie is dealing with Manchola’s firing, bypassing Mustafá (Enrique Carriazo), the airline’s newly promoted director, about whom she has information that will help her keep her job, the two men execute their plan. They want the plane to refuel in Medellín so they can fly to Cuba, a long journey for the DC-3. When a passenger needs water for his medicine, the kidnappers try to get Marisol to do it, but she faints from fear.
Captain Lucena tells Lequerica to call ground control and lies that the kidnappers are requesting another stewardess when they refuel in Medellín. Despite being fired, Edie is the only one who boards that plane, in exchange for a new contract from Mustafa. When she arrives at the Medellín airport, she is surprised to find that Bárbara is already there; She wants to help her friend on this flight and she likes the adventure of being on a hijacked plane. What they don’t know is that they will be on that plane for days.
What shows will it remind you of? The most recent program that reminds us The hijacking of flight 601 is To kidnapdespite Flight 601 It takes place 51 years ago and Idris Elba is nowhere to be found.
Our opinion: Created by Camilo Prince and Pablo González, The hijacking of flight 601 attempts to thread the needle between being a serious kidnapping thriller and being a campy treatise on the era of kidnapping craze that the early 1970s really was. The story is loosely based on a kidnapping that took place on May 30 of 1973 and which traveled through Latin America for a total of 60 hours, making it the longest in mileage and time in the history of Latin America.
Perhaps the nature of kidnappings back then, when the perpetrators were politically motivated and had no intention of harming anyone, was what led Prince and González to give the show a more personal, soapy treatment. The story will be more about the crew in the air and on the ground who did everything they could to keep their passengers safe, of course; These stories always are. But the first episode seems to put a real emphasis on the personal, especially when it comes to Edie and Barbara.
They are best friends, but also opposite sides of what it meant to be a professional woman in the early ’70s. Edie is constantly juggling, while Barbara seems to glide through her life, being all dolled up and having affairs with married men. It will be interesting to see how each of them handles being targeted during this kidnapping; They will probably be the ones who have the most interaction with the kidnappers themselves.
What we wonder is how well the creators and their writers will be able to maintain that balance between thriller and soap opera. As the situation becomes more dire and the crew and passengers try to figure out how to defeat the hijackers, we get the feeling that the frothier parts of the story will fade away. That kind of transition can work, as long as there isn’t a jarring tonal shift.
Sex and skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Barbara tells Edie that they will be on a beach in Havana in four hours, but the cabin discovers that the coordinates where the kidnappers want to go are not near Havana.
Sleeping star: We’ll give it to the show’s music coordinator, because the scenes in the first episode are stellar, with Spanish versions of songs like “House of the Rising Sun” setting the mood.
Most pilot line: Barbara tells Imogen to keep saying “66 times 7” in Spanish to help her smile.
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. The hijacking of flight 601 It’s entertaining and looks great; We’re just wondering if this thriller-soap opera hybrid will maintain dual tones throughout the series.
Joel Keller@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but make no mistake: he’s a couch potato. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and other places.
