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

Flight of the Phoenix is a remake of a Jimmy Stewart movie that I've never seen. This movie is bombing horribly at the box office because you don't need to see it if you already saw the preview. In the trailer, we know the plane crashes. We know they fight amongst themselves. We know they attempt and succeed at building a new plane out of the old plane parts. We know that nomads get after them. We even know that they get the plane to take off. There is only one mild surprise but it doesn t change anything since you already know the ending.

When the previews give everything away, there is no reason to see the movie. This is still a pretty good movie, but I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I gone in blindly to see it.

This stars Dennis Quaid and Tyrese as two pilots sent to pick up a crew of oil well workers in the Mongolian desert. The dry well is being shut down and most of the workers are a bit disgruntled, plus Quaid and Tyrese aren t happy about having to go pick them up. As the crew are loading up, an extra passenger (Giovanni Ribisi) comes on board. He looks and acts like a Nazi and the oil workers say it's a long story when Quaid asks why they have an unexpected extra passenger.

Shortly after take-off, they run into a sandstorm and eventually crash in the middle of the desert. They have no radio and don t know where they are, so they gather up their gear and decide to wait it out until rescue comes. After several days, Ribisi's character gets the idea to build a new plane out of the old one. After some debate, they all get to work by building mostly at night to preserve water since the temperature is much cooler then. As time goes by, the situation gets worse when they realize that a band of nomads is moving in on their location.

Like I said earlier, if you saw the preview then you already know the whole story. This was like watching a movie I had already seen before. Despite their being a female character, there are no romantic subplots. Quaid's character goes through some minor development as he changes from a disinterested pilot to the leader of the group. The most interesting character of them all is the oddball played by Ribisi. The acting is all pretty solid, given the material, but I would like to have seen more background information on who Ribisi's character was and how exactly he ended up at an oil rig out in the desert.

The direction is okay given the plot and it was interesting to see the crew design the new plane, but this film just didn't have a lot to work with. The whole thing could have been done as a one-hour episode of some television show rather than stretch it out to be a full-length movie. Some of the music was really good, though.

Also of note, I don't know if it was a bad print of the movie, but the color abruptly changed toward the end. It went from a washed out brownish color a more natural color as if the time had suddenly changed from dusk to midday. In a couple of other parts it went from light to dark too fast. Continuity problems like this really take away from the movie and make it all look like it was scrapped together, or something major had been edited out in between the time changes.

All in all, Flight of the Phoenix is a so-so action movie with few surprises. I would like to see the original and compare the two films, but I won't be hunting it down at the local video store any time soon. With all the other stuff that is out right now, you should wait to rent this one or catch it on television one afternoon when there's nothing else to do.