The Viaduct Helicopter Climax (Arabesque) Arabesque (1966)

Protagonist	David Pollock
Mission	Take Beshraavi and Sloane down with operator's improvisation, not scholarship
Runtime	105m
Climax	beat 28 · 103m · 98% into film
Wind-down	beats 29–30 · 104m–105m · 2m long
Resolution type	validation

The climax

The cipher is already solved — "Goosey Goosey Gander," microdot, the assassination date and time^b23 — and the real Jena is already recovered from the truck.^b25 What is left to test is whether the Oxford professor's improvised post-midpoint approach can survive the antagonists at their most aggressive. The combine harvester misses (b26).^b26 Beshraavi and Sloane go airborne (b27).^b27 The chase converges under the spans of the Crumlin Viaduct.

The audience-certainty moment is the ladder gambit at b28.^b28 Pollock readies a ladder. Yasmin tells him not to — he will be a sitting duck. He drops the ladder into the helicopter's rotor blades as the aircraft passes below. The rotors foul, the helicopter falls, it explodes. The antagonists are gone in one improvised gesture by a man whose initial approach an hour earlier was to translate the cipher and take the fee. The operator's instincts the back half has been acquiring win the helicopter fight with a ladder.

The wind-down differs because

The Oxford punt at b29 and the "David, you lied to me!" / "Sure. It was my turn." exchange at b30^{b29 b30} are the new-equilibrium image: Mancini lightens, Pollock poles a punt, Yasmin reclines, and the back-half's weapon — deception — becomes mutual and affectionate. The mission is settled at the helicopter explosion; the punt scene shows what the new reality looks like once the threat is gone.

Why this is a validation climax

The post-midpoint approach forms at the dual Midpoint — Mrs. Ragheeb's revelation that Yasmin is General Ali's daughter (cognitive half, b20)^b20 and the fake Vesta translation Pollock feeds Yasmin in the car (operational half, b21).^b21 Across the back half Pollock practices it: he holds the real translation back, breaks Yasmin out of the embassy ambush (b22), decodes the microdot at Hammersmith (b23), pushes through the airport press gauntlet (b24), recovers Jena (b25). By the time the helicopter arrives, the approach is fully formed; the climax tests it against the antagonists in their most aggressive form, and Pollock's improvisation — a ladder into the rotors — wins. The film's better/sufficient quadrant assertion is unambiguous: operator's tools, once acquired, can be carried lightly into the punt scene.