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Treat Williams (Smooth Talk, Deep Rising) and Robert Duvall star in this fictionalized imagining of what happened to the infamous ‘D.B. Cooper’ after he parachuted from a Boeing 727 with $200,000 of the airline’s money in 1971. The film sees Cooper (Williams) successfully land in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, evading a wide police search to reunite with his estranged wife (Kathryn Harrold) before heading toward Mexico. But hot on the couple’s tail is Cooper’s Vietnam war sergeant (Duvall), who also happens to be an insurance agent for the airline.
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper wants to be a funny chase movie, but it never achieves take-off. Director Roger Spottiswoode (Under Fire, Tomorrow Never Dies) successfully incorporates a few well-shot chase sequences, most notably one on white water rapids and another between a car and an airplane on an open highway. But the action rings hollow among the film’s clunky humor and under-developed characters. Williams and Duvall give it their best, but they’re fighting against a weak script that never tells us enough about their characters to care about them. Harrold’s character seems to turn into a completely different person half-way through the film, and Paul Gleason (The Breakfast Club) is wasted as a lame, recurring joke character. The only time the film considers looking beneath the surface of its characters is at the very end — and by then, it’s simply too late.
Spottiswoode reportedly shot 70% of the movie after replacing a number of other directors. The film also went through several different screenwriters (the Writers’ Guild ultimately gave Jeffrey Alan Fiskin sole credit), and the three lead roles were re-cast after different actors were announced in the trades. Unfortunately, the film shows all the signs of a troubled production lacking a strong, singular vision.
With Ed Flanders, R.G. Armstrong, and a honky-tonk-infused soundtrack by James Horner (Titanic, Aliens), one year before his breakthrough score to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.