Flight of the Phoenix (2006, Blu-ray Disc)

Flight of the Phoenix is a film with a lot of potential for entertainment and intrigue. I was really looking forward to seeing it after viewing the film's trailer in late 2004. The film"s top stars are Dennis Quaid, Miranda Otto, Giovanni Ribisi, and Tyrese Gibson. Director John Moore is probably best known for his modestly successful film Behind Enemy Lines, which was released in 2001.

The story of The Flight of the Phoenix is based upon a novel written by Elleston Trevor and had been previously been made into a film with the same title in 1965. In this 2004 version, a crew of rough-necked oil workers, based in Mongolia, have been abruptly terminated from their jobs. They are to be evacuated from their remote desert outpost immediately in a junky old airplane. Quaid plays the plane's pilot, Frank Towns, who is more or less the main character in the film.

Towns (Quaid) and about ten oil workers quickly depart the Mongolian outpost in the fully loaded jet-prop plane. The plane is not only loaded down with supplies and equipment, but has an extra person on board named Elliot, who is portrayed by Giovanni Ribisi. Elliot is a bit of an oddball drifter who had wandered into Gobi-desert outpost rather recently. Although his presence on the plane causes concerns about being overloaded, he is allowed to board.

Soon after taking off over the barren desert the plane flies into a massive dust storm and eventually crashes in "the middle of no where". Although most of the passengers have survived, the plane is a wreck. The survivors realize that they are stranded without any hope for rescue. Apparently they had wandered far off any charted course, and now the radio was destroyed. Fault for the crash is pinned on both Towns, for his poor piloting skills, and Elliot, for adding too much weight to the plane. The film becomes a good character analysis as each person copes with the disaster differently.

Over the remainder of the film the survivors fight the harsh desert elements, each other, and some leftover Genghis Khan holdouts, while trying desperately to conserve a dwindling water and food supply. What is interesting is that there is no consensus on how to extricate themselves from their predicament. The person most likely to head the group, Towns, largely abdicates his leadership role, which is assumed by Elliot (Ribisi). I thought this was a good study in seeing how someone will assert his power in a situation where no one else is stepping up to the plate.

Elliot proves to have an odious, prick-like personality (which the viewer probably always suspected) by threatening to withhold his self-touted expertise in re-building and re-flying the plane. The other characters have varying degrees of optimism or pessimism about their fate. Some even wander off into the desert by themselves to certain death. After various attempts to re-build the plane the survivors are eventually confronted with a horrifying possibility that Elliot may be a fraud and his plane re-building plan may be a complete sham.

One thing that I liked about this film was seeing how some of the characters interacted with each other. For instance Kelly, played by Miranda Otto, was often the optimist who tried to assuage Towns' prickly personality. But Towns was largely disinterested in camaraderie (or romance?) with Kelly, and was completely disdainful of Elliot's plane re-building scheme. Although Otto portrays the only female character in the film, her performance in and of itself did not stand out or add very much to the overall story.

The rugged, harsh desert environment that is the film's setting is also interesting. There is a certain stark beauty in seeing a landscape where all plant and wildlife have been stripped away leaving only ever-shifting sand dunes and rocks as the scenery. I don't know if the Gobi Desert is actually as severe-looking as portrayed in the film. Some artistic license is always allowable though.

One of the film's largest downfalls is that except for Otto, Quaid, and Ribisi, the other actors are all just part of a group that is hanging around and helping out on re-building the plane. They each get a few moments of camera time, then fade into the background again. There are few memorable scenes or lines from any of the characters except Quaid and Ribisi. Within the film there are often tension and moments of suspense, but they quickly disappear when the scene shifts. I had expected to see more psychological tension, mind-games, and subtle body language amongst the characters.

There are also some questionable scenes in the film where the guys are just hanging out in a M*A*S*H-like setting with hand-painted signs and cracking jokes. Weren't they all just at each other' throats? I suppose it did help lighten-up the mood and tone of the film though. I guess it depends on what you expect in such a movie.

Overall, Flight of the Phoenix is an OK film and has moments of tension, suspense, and even a little humor. The special affects used to create the dust storms were quite good. But the film lacks the good, strong characterizations that would have lifted it to a higher level. A solid 3 stars.

trailhound. 2005.