It's TWELVE ANGRY MEN trapped in the desert.

Ernest Borgninge as a tad slow – the mental exhaustion of heading up these men – diagnosed by doctor as mentally incompetent.
Ian Bannen – a  jovial bigot, loudmouth and instigator.

Pragmatic Dorfmann – aircraft designer – uncaring that someone is going to die, working out pragmatically that one of the injured is going to die so would not have to be figured into the payload along the wings.

Orchestra swells overly loud in unlikely places

James Stewart as cantankerous old leatherneck who has flown “every crate ever built”

When they find the catalog for toy planes - it is such an astounding twist to the plot that Richard Attenborough echoes all our emotions by belly-laughing and weeping at the same time. "We could die here - water's running out - or we could die that thing"

"Don't you want to feel what it's like to fly a toy aeroplane?"

the tension between the charactes is palpable - towns wants to start the engine- dorfmann says don't start it.

Dorfman is so pragmatic, clinical he takes into account the injured guy is going to die berfoer the project is over. Conflict between Towns and Dorfmann - who has all drag co-efficients and stress factors worked out - thinks of the men as machines to work on the plance - but Towns thinks of them as men - not realizing that giving them morale will turn them into survival machines. Attenborough as mediator between dorf and towns.


"THese men can't stand har dwork"
"Watching each other die could be harder"