The story of DB Cooper is so familiar it’s boring. Back in 1971, on a flight from Portland to Seattle, someone who called himself Cooper hijacked a plane, stole $200,000 and parachuted away. He has never been found, and coupled with how he was genial to the flight crew, he has become a folk hero. There are already multiple films about Cooper, including several documentaries, but that did not stop filmmaker TJ Regan from making I Am DB Cooper, which mixes docudrama and documentary to suggest one theory about the hijacker’s true identity. At least, that’s the generous way of looking at it. Another, more accurate way is that this film weaves documentary and fiction to tell a story that has no credibility from the start, and barely any entertainment value to boot.
The conceit of the film is that Rodney Lewis Bonnifield, a self-proclaimed outlaw who faces a prison sentence for stabbing someone, claims to be Cooper. He confesses this to a pair of bail bondsmen, who become convinced Bonnifield is telling the truth because it’s their profession to weed out liars, and there are enough details in his story that it MUST be true. Of course, anyone with basic critical thinking skills can tell that Bonnifield is full of it, and the bail bondsmen are utter morons. Bonnifield cannot keep his dates straight, for one thing, and his fantasy of the hijacking involves some bullshit about being cucked into having a death wish. Nonetheless, the bail bondsman think there’s enough credibility to the story that they go on a trip to a river where Bonnifield claims to have hidden some of the money. It will not surprise you to learn they do not find anything.
The interviews are not enough to sustain a film, so Regan flushes out the narrative with dramatized flashbacks of Bonnifield’s tall tales. Ryan Cory plays a younger Bonnifield and brings a kind of mania to the role, sort of like what we see from, say, Ike Barinholtz. Regan, who co-wrote these scenes with Sharmila Sahni, does not have much flair for dialogue or suspense. They amount to little more than you might expect from an Unsolved Mysteries episode, minus the camp. There is also little connection between Cory’s performance and Bonnifield himself, who seems like a depressed loon.
Late in I Am DB Cooper, Regan and the bail bondsman decide to do some basic factchecking. They talk to Bonnifield’s relative, who says the man is mentally ill and could not pull of the hijacking due to a childhood injury. This is the most credible thing in the film, and of course Regan waits until its final minutes to present it. He would rather lead us on a wild goose chase, following along two men who think arming themselves is the same thing as being tough, and who proudly display Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign signs in their office. The title cards read that Bonnifield is serving a four-year prison sentence for the aforementioned stabbing, and will recover the missing money upon his release. In the meantime, maybe Regan and the other saps can think about how Bonnifield, who was born in 1952 and would have to have been 19 at the time of the hijacking, could look nothing like Cooper, who by all accounts was in his 20s or early 30s.
Regan and the bail bondsman do not even bother asking Bonnifield for a photograph of him from the early ‘70s. Seriously.
Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures
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