Television Reviews : Lansbury Explores the Grief of KAL 007 in ‘Shootdown’

November is TV’s month for intrigue and conjecture--from the spate of programs renewing skepticism over the assassination of John F. Kennedy to an NBC movie speculating about the 1983 Soviet downing of a South Korean jetliner.

“Shootdown,” airing at 9 tonight on NBC Channels 4, 36 and 39, is especially strong when exploring the personal grief of a mother who has lost her son to tragedy. Thank Angela Lansbury for that. She is marvelous as Nan Moore, whose 27-year-old son, John, was among the 269 aboard KAL 007 when it was shot down for allegedly violating Soviet air space.

Based on R. W. Johnson’s book “Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection,” the story is weakest when theorizing that, unbeknown to its passengers, the jetliner was on a spy mission for the Unites States when it was brought down by the Soviets.

Director Michael Pressman presents a virtuoso interior sequence depicting one way in which the Korean jet may have been shot down. It’s a masterwork of staging.

Written by producers Judy Merl and Paul Eric Myers, however, “Shootdown” does nothing to definitively sweep away the mysteries still shrouding the incident, which at the time gave President Reagan an opportunity to savage the Kremlin for ordering the destruction of an unarmed passenger jet.

What it does do, however, is move you deeply with its crackling good story about the determination of Moore and her daughter, Elizabeth (Molly Hagen), to find out what really happened. It’s an obsession that alienates her from her friends and colleagues. “You have to trust the people in power that they know our interests better than we do,” one friend naively admonishes her.

As her doubts about published accounts and government statements about the case mount, Moore channels her anguish over her son’s death into an aggressive campaign to learn the truth.

Although Moore finds support among other KAL 007 families, her version of the truth doesn’t square with the Reagan Administration’s or with “The Target Is Destroyed,” Seymour Hersh’s book that accuses the Administration of manipulating the incident for political purposes, but debunks the spy plane theory. Hersh is shown tonight appearing on a “Donahue” episode in which he and Moore took opposite sides on the shoot down.

Just how persuasively Moore makes her circumstantial case with tonight’s viewers remains to be seen.

On that other level, “Shootdown” shows the lingering ache of sorrow convincingly and compellingly, with Lansbury acting with intelligence, purpose and honesty.

“That is what’s so tragic about losing young people,” another KAL 007 parent tells Moore. “All that is left is the possibilities.”

Possibilities--that is what “Shootdown” is all about.