10. Mad Max:
Road Warrior Psychotherapist David Bookbinder was taking a ride on his motorcycle on the Brooklyn to queen expressway when a tractor trailer and a Cadillac on his right started closing in his location, the scene from road warrior immediately flashed through this mind where Mel Gibson pushes the police cruiser in overdrive and the thugs behind him collide into each other. Bookbinder’s bike didn’t nearly have enough power to pull that move but he used his ingenuity and hit the brakes and watched the two vehicles swerve into another narrowly avoid a crash and correct their course, leaving a sweating David in their dust, frazzled but alive.
9. Toy Story:
Walter and his son Chris were taking a swim down at Daytona Beach when the autistic 12 year old was swept away in the current. As the waves kept pulling them apart, Walter would yell, ‘To infinity’ and his son would reply, ‘And beyond.’ which, in fact, kept them going for almost the whole night. They traded water for at least 15 hours before rescue teams found them, even though they drifted apart eventually out of earshot before they were rescued. Surprisingly, none of them received any fatal injury. The only thing that bothered autistic 12 years old Chris was the jelly fish that kept stinging him.
8. Sometimes a Great Notion:
The most horrifying experience could be seeing your own daughter stuck in the propellers of a houseboat. Boating on Lake Oroville, Edward Woodman, notices the boat coming to a halt and finds her 8 year old daughter Elizabeth Woodman stuck in the propellers. Like how every father would do, he dove in to save her. Remembering the technique how Paul saves his brother in ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ the father swims back to the surface, gulps 15 mouthfuls of air, swims back to breathe air in to her daughter and continues the procedure until his son gets a knife to free Elizabeth for it was her clothes that got jammed. Fortunately, she did not receive any major injuries.
7. Madagascar:
Following their routine, brothers Evan and Hayden Tepdenhart went in a church on a Sunday. That was when the little 5 year old Evan started chocking on his own lollipop. When Hayden noticed that his little brother was choking and could not breathe, he did not waste any time performing the Heimlich maneuver. He said he had seen one of the characters in Madagascar save a life by squeezing the tummy and forcing the food out. The parents were as astonished as the reporters were. Silly cartoons do come in handy.
6. My Sister’s Keeper:
Alex Cooper, 17, noticed bruises all over her body, suffered extreme lethargy, fatigue and numerous headaches. She thought it happened because she was just a lazy teenager like every other. Telling her parents was not an option because they would think that she was just making a big deal out of nothing; another problem that every teenager faces. She remembered how in the movie ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ the character has the same symptoms and eventually dies. Provided how brave and already academically smart she was, Alex diagnosed here self with Leukemia and declared that it was about time that she saw a professional specialist.
5. Lethal Weapon 2:
After the resilient rapids flipped his kayak over during a kayaking session, Rob Portman dislocated his shoulder by hitting it on a boulder. His arm hurt, it became numb and useless, preventing him from swimming to safety. So, the first thought that crossed his mind was how Mel Gibson intentionally dislocates his shoulder to escape a straitjacket and slams against a file cabinet to crack it back in again. Rob decided to do the same, he slammed his body against a boulder and popped his shoulder back in, though he couldn’t feel it, but it wasn’t useless anymore. It helped him swim back to safety.
4. Mrs. Doubtfire:
Who can forget the comical scene from Mrs. Doubtfire when Pierce Brosnan’s character accidentally starts choking on a shrimp? Mrs. Doubtfire (Robin Williams) in disguise then attempts to give him the Heimlich maneuver which helps clear his airway, getting unmasked in the process! Callum Smith (eight years old) might not have understood the whole movie but when his cousin Thomas (six years old) started choking on a lollipop, he remembered the scene from the movie and grabbed his cousin from his midriff and squeezed hard and out popped the lollipop saving his cousin’s life.
3. An Officer and a Gentleman:
Burnon. S. Stillman, 51, was helpless poised upside down underwater in Orchad Lake after suffering a horrible ultra-light plane crash. Panic gushed through his veins and at that moment he actually did think that it was his last day. Luckily, he remembered how in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ the navy pilot trainees were pushed in swimming pools at high speeds to stimulate crashes. They were taught to stay calm and untangle themselves and swim for surface. That’s exactly what Burnon did, he calmed himself down, removed his helmet, undid himself and swam back to surface.
2. Black Hawk Down:
We’ve all seen the block buster movie Black hawk down, the story of U.S army rangers downed behind enemy lines, the iconic destruction of two U.S black hawk helicopters, and the efforts of the rescue teams to get the downed unit back safe from enemy hands.9 year old Tristan from Arizona was a huge fan of the movie, his parents used to stop him from watching it citing that it’s too violent for him, but Tristan loved the army medic, he used to dress up like the army medic and play around acting about saving lives. His passion saved his sister’s life one day when Tristan’s mother found his younger sister face down, floating in the family pool. The distraught mother ran around worried while Tristan calmly pulled his sister out of the water and proceeded to resuscitate her, recalling scenes from the movie he was actually able to properly administer CPR without and prior knowledge and help his sister resume breathing and saved her life.
1. Deep Impact:
Apparently back in 2004 when the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean displaced over 1.6 million and killed over 200,000, there existed a man in the village of Kosgoda in southern Srilanka that started a panic and asked everyone to run to high ground to the temples when he saw the water receding along the shoreline. The devastating tsunami hit moments after the people had all reached the safety of high ground and everyone saw the destruction that it caused from a safe distance, when asked later how he knew that the wave was coming he quoted seeing the movie Deep impact and said that he knew because the water went back that it could come again to take your life just like it did in the movie.
All these movies have been so surprising, funny and ironic to make us believe that how a movie can save lives in real.
