Despite its succinct runtime, the documentary The Skyjacker’s Tale manages to traverse a multitude of subjects: Vietnam, racial tension, terrorism, true crime, white privilege, post-colonialism, revolution and, most compelling of all, Ishmael Muslim Ali, the titular fugitive currently laying low somewhere in Cuba. In 1973, Ali (then known as Ishmael LaBeet) was convicted alongside four other men of murdering eight people in a shooting at the Fountain Valley Golf Course in the Virgin Islands. The tragic crime underlined the dramatic transformation that saw the country openly catering to the business and tourist whims of white Americans, largely at the expense of the local population. Seven white people were killed in the massacre; the shooters, police claimed, were all black.
Ali, a charismatic sexagenarian with a hilariously foul mouth and a penchant for self-mythology, has long maintained his innocence, though there’s plenty of reason to suspect he had something to do with the crime. After leaving the army on a dishonorable discharge from Vietnam, he spent some time in New York with the Black Panthers cultivating a sense of revolutionary power. Upon returning home to the V.I., he and his associates started selling weed and sticking up tourists. Facing considerable pressure from a local government beholden to powerful American stakeholders, authorities instantly pegged Ali and company as the killers. Ali, in turn, accused the police of using torture to force a confession, and, in the film, he cites an unusually accelerated judicial process, which culminated in life sentences for each suspect, as proof of corruption. There’s even more evidence where that came from, but Ali was convicted nonetheless.
The film doesn’t attempt to clear Ali’s name, though it does a good job of revealing the suspect nature of his conviction, with Kastner taking a lighter approach to the model Errol Morris used in The Thin Blue Line. Across various interviews with the main players from the trial and investigation, the director accounts for all the conflicting testimonies and possible cover-ups, but he maintains a sort of relaxed vibe throughout, using a funky ’70s soundtrack and an investigative style that conspicuously lacks Morris’ probing obsessiveness and serious demeanor. This might be the most fun documentary about systemic corruption and racial injustice ever made, which isn’t exactly a compliment.
The story of the Fountain Valley massacre is compelling enough on its own, but Ali truly made a name for himself on New Year’s Eve in 1984. While being transported back to the United States after a failed appeal in the Virgin Islands, he hijacked a plane using a gun he assembled in prison and ordered the pilot to take him to Cuba, where he’s resided ever since. Kastner receives firsthand commentary from an array of subjects, including the pilot, one of the flight attendants and a few of the passengers, each of whom ironically seem to possess a kind of cautious admiration for Ali, who openly referred to himself as the “Fountain Valley murderer” as he rounded up his hostages. (One subject even describes him as a “nice, respectful” hijacker.) To hear them recall the event sounds like someone describing a movie, making an already larger-than-life story that much more immense and bewildering.
Ali’s case sheds light on the racial injustice in Caribbean countries, highlighting the widespread exploitation that comes with wealthy Americans making tropical playgrounds of places like the Virgin Islands, but it’s also one hell of a story, something the film struggles to translate. Kastner brings little in the way of energy and creativity, relying exclusively on familiar documentary conventions like staged reenactments and talking head interviews, each of which are framed in identical medium close-ups. At a meager 76 minutes, The Skyjacker’s Tale could make for quality television, but it’s mostly uninspired as cinema. Despite all this, Kastner manages to stick the landing. The film ends on a somewhat ominous note, with Barack Obama announcing renewed relations between America and Cuba, and we leave Ali with the notion that no amount of in-flight piracy and self-styled revolution is enough to escape the reach of global influence.
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