Flight of the Phoenix film review

certificate_12A

FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX

With a story about a rag tag group of oil workers stranded in the Mongolian desert after their plane crashes, the intention is that you root for them and their intrepid efforts to escape. The trouble with Flight Of The Phoenix is that all the survivors are so excruciatingly annoying you hope that instead they all suffer a slow and tortuous death in their sweltering sandy graveyard.

Flight Of The Phoenix is a remake of a 1965 Oscar nominated film starring James Stewart, Richard Attenborough and Peter Finch. Scott Frank and Edward Burns have updated Lukas Heller's original script, inserting the type of painfully crass dialogue that makes you wince. "So, how screwed are we?" inquires co-pilot A.J. (Tyrese Gibson) as their cargo plane is being battered by a sand storm. "Pretty screwed," replies the tough, cynical pilot Frank Towns (Dennis Quaid) without a hint of self-consciousness.

Directed by John Moore, who confesses to a "clinical obsession" with planes, the film's best moments involve the crash of the aged but elegant C-119 cargo plane. Presumably one of the main reasons for revisiting this material is the opportunity to upgrade the effects which, combined with cinematographer Brendan Galvin's plentiful and gratuitous shots of the golden dunes, make Flight Of The Phoenix at least visually engaging.

Towns and A.J. have been sent in to a remote oil exploration operation in the Gobi Desert to close down the well and take the workers home. Encompassing every cultural stereotype, the clichéd collection of misfits includes the feisty rig boss Kelly (Miranda Otto), the stuck up businessman Ian (Hugh Laurie) and a bespectacled techno boffin Elliott, (Giovanni Ribisi). All are so crudely evolved characters that it's difficult to identify with any of them and harder still to be invested in their fate.

Following the crash, Elliott reveals he is an aircraft designer. Engaging in a power struggle with Towns, he comes up with a plan to turn the wreckage into a new plane and fly to freedom. In the midst of this unlikely scenario, only Ribisi takes the opportunity to invest some humour in his portrayal of the enigmatic Elliott, affecting an exaggerated, vague accent and sly smirk. Quaid chooses to play up Towns' rugged machismo, strutting around shirtless spouting rallying speeches like "I don't want to die like this. Let's get the hell out of here."