Black Sunday (1977)

 

Synopsis: Israeli commandos and senior FBI agents race against time to stop an authorized half-time show at Super Bowl X. 

Blurb From the VHS Jacket: “Black Sunday is the powerful story of a Black September terrorist group attempting to blow up a Goodyear blimp hovering over the Super Bowl stadium with 80,000 people and the President of the United States in attendance.” 

What Did I Learn?: 1) Cancelling the Super Bowl is akin to cancelling Christmas. 2) Anyone who has a nervous breakdown has got to have something wrong with them. 

You Might Like This Movie If: you know that blowing up the Goodyear blimp wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen during a Super Bowl. 

Really?: 1) I’d like to know a bit more about Lander’s (Bruce Dern) motivations. I realize Lander was treated badly by his wife and the military, but I had some trouble believing he would become not just a cold-blooded murderer but a suicide bomber for a Palestinian terrorist group. 1b) For that matter, I was a bit surprised that Dahlia (Marthe Keller) would similarly volunteer for suicide bomber duty, considering she’s a multilingual, and highly competent killer who would (presumably) be much more useful to her comrades alive than dead. 2) Hey, if Sean Connery can portray a Saudi Arabian diplomat, I guess Robert Shaw can be an Israeli commando. 3) Wait, do the terrorists know the US President will attend the Super Bowl? This is never mentioned until the third act of the film. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that if the Secret Service is given credible intelligence of a possible future terrorist attack they have the authority to tell the President: "nuh-uh...you're not going." 

Rating: Black Sunday is slightly dated, and it may bore modern action movie fans because long stretches pass without any violence, but in my opinion John Frankenheimer succeeded in crafting a gripping counterterrorism thriller that’s well worth checking out at least once. 8/10 stars. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075765/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2