Is there any better start to a documentary than hearing the criminal at the centre of it calmly narrate his misadventures? American Skyjacker, written and directed by Eli Kooris and Joshua Shaffer, begins with Martin McNally staring straight down the lens and inviting us to settle in for a fireside chat about the time he hijacked an American Airlines flight and held a nation in suspense for five days. It’s an audacious framing choice that immediately lifts the film above the conveyor belt of true-crime fare crowding the streamers.
The documentary charts McNally’s transformation from small-time stick-up artist to would-be heir of D.B. Cooper. In 1972, emboldened by lax security and an appetite for quick riches, McNally boarded a plane in St. Louis wearing a wig and sunglasses, flashed a gun, and demanded half a million dollars and a parachute. What follows is so outlandish that, were it fiction, it would almost certainly be dismissed as implausible.
Kooris and Shaffer lean heavily into the absurdity while never trivialising the danger. The decision to intercut McNally’s present-day reflections with period reconstructions works well. The recreations are sharply cast, with Logan Spahitz capturing the jittery swagger of a man playing at outlaw legend, and the 1970s are recreated with a tactile warmth. Against this, editors Shaffer and David Tillman weave in archival footage to ground the escalating chaos. Watching Walter Cronkite calmly relay events that increasingly resemble a Coen brothers set-piece adds to the film’s authenticity.
A tense reenactment of Martin McNally during the 1972 skyjacking.
“…a fireside chat about the time he hijacked an American Airlines flight…”
The story of American Skyjacker is a labyrinth of missteps, improvisation, and narrow escapes. There’s the inebriated airport bar patron who tries to intervene by driving his car into the jet’s landing gear. There’s McNally’s parachute jump, which ends with him losing both his gun and the ransom cash bag mid-fall. And then there’s the prison chapter, where McNally’s association with fellow hijacker Garrett Trapnell spins the narrative into yet more stranger-than-fiction territory: a helicopter hijacking, a thwarted escape, and a teenager persuaded into staging her own botched skyjacking. Each twist is presented with brisk clarity, with the film resisting sensationalism.
What gives the documentary its heft is the steady accumulation of character detail. McNally, now older and reflective, recounts his escapade with a combination of pride, regret, and a faint note of disbelief. He insists he isn’t seeking sympathy or profit, and his conversational delivery becomes a counterweight to the frenetic events of the past. Kooris and Shaffer include perspectives from FBI agents, journalists, and those touched by the case, providing context without clogging the narrative. Crucially, they resist the urge to mythologize. Unlike the cottage industry built around D.B. Cooper, the documentary sidesteps conspiracy theories entirely. It sticks to the facts and allows the sheer peculiar momentum of the tale to carry it.
For a story so wild, the film’s achievement lies in its restraint. American Skyjacker is gripping without being lurid, stylish without leaning on cliché, and genuinely gripping from start to finish. If the documentary boom has taught us anything, it’s that not every true-crime case merits a feature-length chronicle. This one does.
Learn more at the official American Skyjacker website
"…gripping without being lurid, stylish without leaning on cliché..."
