This brief documentary tells the strange story of Operation Overdue. In 1979, the New Zealand government dispatched a brave team of police officers to the Antarctic on a recovery mission after a New Zealand aircraft crashed into Mount Erebus with the loss of 257 lives. With as much efficiency and decency as they could, these scared, cold men had to find and retrieve the grisly corpses, as well as anything material to the investigation – including the black box, whose terrible audio recording is played at one stage in the film – all while combatting thoughts that they would themselves be added to the fatality statistics, and that they were being let down by the airline authorities whose incompetence they were exposing. It’s an interesting story, but it deserves a longer running time than just over an hour, and is more suited to television.
