Back from Eternity

A plane taking off in South America is caught in a storm and comes down in the middle of the jungle. Those aboard are nothing alike: a bounty hunter, a prisoner, a woman, a few passengers. The plane can be repaired but it will not carry everyone. The question of who stays comes up. John Farrow's film is a remake of his own Five Came Back from 1939; the same director made both. The real tension of the telling is not in the jungle but in those few minutes of deciding who gets on the plane. Robert Ryan, Anita Ekberg and Rod Steiger are in the cast. The film's showing of the indigenous people of the forest as nothing but a threat is a view common in its period and indefensible now.