The Skyjacker’s Tale
DOCS D: Jamie Kastner. Canada. 75 min. Sep 10, 9:30 pm, Hot Docs Sep 13, 7:30 pm, Scotiabank 10. Rating: NNNN
In 1984, an American Airlines flight from New York to the U.S. Virgin Islands was diverted to Cuba by Ishmael Labeet, a radicalized Vietnam vet who’d been convicted of murdering eight people at the Fountain Valley golf course in St. Croix.
Kastner relies a little too heavily on dramatic re-enactments of Labeet’s flight to Cuba in the first section, but the film gets a lot more involving once he starts digging into the history that put Labeet on that plane in the first place.
