Joseph Sargent

The wife of police chief Brody is followed to the Bahamas by a Great White. As the shark targets her family she becomes determined to protect them and destroy the monster!

As the film opens in 1962, General Douglas MacArthur (Gregory Peck) is at West Point, his alma mater. MacArthur, ramrod straight, reviews the ranks of marching cadets before delivering his poignant, bittersweet, farewell address to the Corps. The action abruptly shifts back to the tunnels of Corregidor in early 1942, where MacArthur's besieged American and Filipino troops are desperately holding out against the victorious forces of Japan. The end is near. In Washington, General George Marshall and Admiral Ernest J. King are simultaneously delivering the grim news to President Roosevelt (Dan O'Herlihy). They discuss global priorities and admit that they can't hold the Philippines. Roosevelt reluctantly decides to order MacArthur off Corregidor, knowing that he will be furious. MacArthur is ordered to board a submarine and slip away to Australia, where he can organize ongoing resistance. But MacArthur refuses to sneak away from his beloved command traveling furtively beneath the waves. He insists on boarding a PT boat, and his family insists on accompanying him on the dangerous voyage. The Japanese navy has thrown a blockade around the islands, and the heavily armed PT boats would be no match for destroyers. The pair of PT boats manage to evade the Japanese pickets and floating mines, proving that the blockade can be circumvented. Eventually arriving in Melbourne, MacArthur discovers that there is no Philippine relief expedition being organized. He addresses the adoring Australian crowds, explaining that his first priority will be the recapture of the Philippines. But he soon learns that Bataan and Corregidor have fallen, leaving 70,000 of his starving men imprisoned under unimaginable conditions. MacArthur decides to mount the defense of Australia among the jungles of New Guinea, where the battle is fought under brutal circumstances. As a result, MacArthur develops his famous island hopping strategy, bypassing Japanese strongholds through the use of Allied naval and air superiority, cutting critical supply lines and starving the isolated Japanese strong points into submission. MacArthur also develops a well-earned reputation for dramatics, self-promotion and vanity. The Allies advance steadily up the Southwest Pacific island chain over the next two years, but not without tremendous bloodshed. Ordered to Honolulu in July 1944 to meet with President Roosevelt and Admirals Leahy and Nimitz, MacArthur upstages his naval rivals with a grandiose, belated arrival. His jealous, distrustful relationship with Roosevelt is apparent. The US Navy wants to bypass the Philippines and take Taiwan first. MacArthur makes an impassioned argument that to do so would be an indelible stain on American honor. He reminds them that numerous promises have been made to the loyal people of the Philippines, including by Roosevelt himself. In the end, MacArthur's view prevails. US forces come ashore at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. In an iconic scene, MacArthur insists on going ashore right behind the second wave of troops. He steps off the landing craft into knee-deep water, wading ashore as the cameras roll. On the beach, MacArthur addresses the Filipinos by radio, exhorting them to drive the Japanese occupiers out. As the battle rages, the General receives his fifth star. He is soon taken to a prison camp where many of the brutalized, emaciated survivors of Bataan and Corregidor have been held for more than two years. Many emotional reunions follow. Back home, President Roosevelt dies in the spring of 1945. Harry Truman succeeds him and authorizes the use of two atomic weapons to bring Japan to her knees. A furious MacArthur rails against this new, impersonal brand of warfare, realizing that an era has passed. Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur presides over the solemn surrender ceremonies in September 1945. As Allied military governor of Japan, MacArthur institutes liberal social reforms and oversees the complete rebuilding and modernization of Japan. When the Russian military representative in Japan curtly informs MacArthur that Russia will soon commence an illegal occupation of Hokkaido Island, MacArthur just as curtly informs the Russian that the entire Soviet delegation will be thrown in jail. The occupation never occurs. MacArthur is given one last chance at military glory in June 1950 when Communist North Korean forces invade South Korea, moving swiftly and nearly pushing American and South Korean forces off the peninsula. MacArthur is appointed Supreme Commander of UN forces in Korea. He buys time until he can devise a brilliant but risk-laden amphibious landing behind North Korean lines at Inchon. The successful operation proves to be a stroke of genius. North Korean forces are virtually cut off from supplies and reinforcements and have to retreat northward in disarray. MacArthur then carries the fight into North Korea itself. Despite MacArthur's reassurances to the contrary, the Communist Chinese suddenly enter the war in huge numbers in order to bolster their sagging North Korean ally. UN forces are again pushed southward, incurring heavy casualties. MacArthur grows increasingly frustrated, chafing at political interference from Washington. Tensions between Truman and MacArthur boil over when MacArthur's insubordination in the face of direct orders threatens to undermine Truman's authority. After a stellar military career spanning more than a half-century, MacArthur is relieved of command. He returns to a hero's welcome in April 1951 while Truman's popularity plummets. MacArthur delivers a moving retirement address to a joint session of Congress. The movie then moves forward to 1962, and an increasingly frail Douglas MacArthur is bidding farewell to West Point. One last time he utters the famous words that were the hallmark of his career: Duty. Honor. Country.

In New York City, four heavily armed men with code names (Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Brown), wearing disguises of eyeglasses, fedora hats, and fake mustaches, board at different station stops (the Green Line at 59th Street, Grey Line at 51st Street, Brown Line at Grand Central, and finally Blue Line at 28th Street) on the Pelham 123 subway train run of the 6 Lexington Avenue Local service. The men take the train, securing a group of hostages, whom they isolate in one car of the train, then disconnect this car from the rest of the train. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau), a cynical and curmudgeonly yet light-hearted New York City Transit Authority police lieutenant, begins his day by leading four visiting Tokyo Metro directors on a tour of New York's subway command-center. This is interrupted by Blue's radio announcement to the command center that "your train has been taken." Blue (Robert Shaw), the British-accented leader of the hijackers, tells Garber they are demanding a ransom of one million dollars, to be delivered to them within one hour; otherwise they will kill one passenger per minute, starting when the hour has passed. Garber, the sarcastic Lieutenant Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller), and other transit workers cooperate while trying to guess how the criminals intend to escape the subway tunnel and get away. Various clues soon surface for Garber to figure out, first with his hearing Blue's very distinctive English accent over the radio. It later turns out that Blue was a ruthless British mercenary, and Green (Martin Balsam) is a former transit worker who from time to time sneezes over the radio and is heard by Garber, who responds by saying "Gesundheit." Garber also learns that one of the hostages is an undercover police officer. The mayor finally agrees to pay the ransom at the urging of his deputy mayor. The police dispatch a squad car carrying the ransom money. When the car is wrecked in a collision, Garber daringly bluffs to buy some time, telling the takers that the money already has been delivered to the 28th Street Station and only the walk down the tunnel is delaying it. A reluctant Blue agrees to the delay. A police motorcycle completes the trip from the scene of the collision to the subway station and two unarmed officers are sent down the track on foot to deliver the money to the hijackers. With the money finally in hand, the hijackers demand that electric power be restored to the subway line, and that all signals in the path of the train be turned green from 28th Street to the South Ferry station, both of these being necessary for the car to move. Having overridden the subway car's dead-man's switch, which would otherwise ensure its stopping unless someone remained at the throttle, the hijackers get off the train and set it in motion. As the train starts to move, the undercover officer also jumps off the train and hides between the rails. The car begins to travel faster and faster, since no one is controlling its speed. Outside the tunnel, Garber and Inspector Daniels are convinced that the runaway train is a diversion and that the hijackers must have left the train. The hijackers divide the ransom money, discard their disguises, and start their escape into the tunnel's emergency exit; however, Grey refuses to leave his gun behind as agreed and is shot dead by Blue. The undercover officer, still hiding in the tracks, manages to kill Brown with one shot. Green escapes onto the street. Garber arrives after Green has gotten away and, drawing on Blue, orders him to surrender just as Blue is about to shoot the undercover officer. Blue asks Garber if the death penalty is available in the state of New York anymore. Told that it is not, Blue responds, "Pity", then promptly electrocutes himself by stepping onto the third rail while a horrified Garber watches. Entering the South Ferry Loop, the runaway car finally encounters a red signal. The car's emergency brakes are tripped and it grinds to a halt; the remaining hostages are all safe. Green, the only hijacker to escape, has left as a clue only Garber's surmise that one of the hijackers must be an ex-motorman of the New York Transit Authority (owing to the hijackers' knowledge of the car's operation). With the dead three all identified, Garber realizes that the hijacker still at large must be the former transit employee. Garber and Patrone, working their way through a list of former motormen "discharged for cause" (and, by implication, disgruntled), pay a visit to Harold Longman. Longman, known to the audience as Mr. Green, is shown rolling in the packs of ransom money on the bed in his seedy efficiency apartment when Garber and Patrone knock on his door. He hides the money quickly, then opens to the officers and bluffs his way through their questioning. The officers find Longman's alibi weak, but start out the door, until Longman sneezes and Garber says "Gesundheit." Garber then re-opens the door, the expression on his face in the door opening (the film's final frame) telling the audience that he knows he has just found the final hijacker.

A prisoner is released from custody on the condition that he becomes a stool pigeon for the FBI to help them incriminate a corrupt sheriff. Good ol' Southern boy Gator McKlusky has served four years of his five-year prison sentence for moonshining, up to this point a model prisoner. When he learns that his younger brother, college student and activist Donny McKlusky, was murdered, his bound dead body found in a Bogan County Lake, he is able to convince the authorities to release him early in return for him finding evidence against the suspected culprit, Bogan County Sheriff J.C. Connors, not for the murder of which they have no idea of the McKluskys' suspicions against Connors, but concerning an active but somewhat cold IRS file, namely yet unproven but well-known unreported lucrative profits in bilking moonshiners. They also know that the sheriff is crooked in other ways, but the IRS only has the jurisdiction on the tax evasion issue. They provide Gator with a souped-up car fit for moonshine runs that would be able to outrun almost any on road vehicle, and a contact in Bogan County: Dude Watson, a mechanic who has no option but to cooperate despite his own fears about Connors, in he being a con on probation, the conditions which they know he has broken. In turn, Dude is able to set Gator up with moonshiner Roy Boone to infiltrate the business in the county as one of his runners. The IRS's goal, which has its inherent risks for Gator in him needing to provide names of moonshiners, is secondary for Gator, who just wants to avenge Donny's murder. But Gator could have bigger problems if the Sheriff gets wind that the Feds are after him via Gator and/or Dude, they or anyone connected to them possibly ending up like Donny if he has his way. —Huggo