Working from a screenplay by Ken Nolan and Eric Warren Singer, Kosinski judiciously mixes the firefighting footage — full of monstrous clouds of choking smoke and
roaring walls of flames voraciously advancing across forested mountainsides — with scenes of the men away from the fire lines.
► A giant caged gorilla is placed into a military cargo plane, accompanied by a man and a woman in handcuffs who argue with soldiers and an agent; the gorilla growls, snarls, and
roars, showing large sharp teeth until he breaks apart the cage and several soldiers and government agents fire rifles and handguns to no avail as the animal
roars and throws pieces
of metal, striking some
of the men, tosses several men against the bulkheads
of the plane, and stands on the chest
of an unconscious agent, who wakes up and shouts; a sliding military vehicle in the cargo hold pins the gorilla to a
wall, the man and the woman in handcuffs break free and don parachutes, placing one on the agent and after the plane crashes in smoke and
flames we see few bloody footprints
of the gorilla leading away from the crash site (we do not see the bodies
of the other passengers) and the agent has a cut on his forehead and the other man has lots
of blood on the back
of head and his T - shirt while the woman's face is scraped on one cheek and one side
of her forehead.