Although it's still the statistically safest way to travel yet comes in behind public speaking as the number one phobia, flying still unnerves a great deal of people. Real-life crashes and hijackings certainly don't help matters (even when a car accident is far, far more likely to take one's life), but I can only imagine that the airline businesses aren't happy with how Hollywood deals with such matters.
While we might see countless scenes of planes arriving at some destination, the ones we remember are the crashes. They've occurred in any number of films over the past decades, but filmmakers and especially technical and special effects crews have become especially adept at showing such aerial to Earth mayhem. Who can forget the crash sequences in the likes of "Fearless" and "Cast Away, while the upcoming "The Aviator" has two of its own.
One is particularly harrowing (as Howard Hughes skims and then crashes through part of Beverly Hills), but perhaps just as "good" (depending on how one views such material) is the catalytic one in the remake of "Flight of the Phoenix." In it, a cargo plane flies smack dab into the middle of a massive sandstorm in the Gobi desert with less than smooth results. The scene is exciting and scary and starts off the film with a bang.
Unfortunately, it's the best thing in this otherwise predictable action-adventure flick. And that's not just for those who saw the original 1966 film that starred Jimmy Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy. Instead, it's simply that the film offers few surprises. There's little doubt that once the characters find themselves lost in the massive desert they'll get on each other's nerves, worry about running out of food and water, and try to figure out how to be rescued and/or escape, all while dealing with internal and external complications.
One would have expected something better or at least more imaginative from Scott Frank ("Minority Report," "Get Shorty") and Edward Burns (the actor/writer/director seen in "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Brothers McMullen") who've adapted Lukas Heller's original screenplay (that was based on Elleston Trevor's novel). Instead, it's a by-the-numbers, formulaic effort filled with some unintentionally funny and clunky dialogue. It doesn't help matters that director John Moore (who went from helming SEGA TV commercials to "Behind Enemy Lines) appears to have bumped his head or suffered from dehydration while shooting in the desert.
One can only hope that's the reason for the direction being all over the board. From the old-fashioned action/drama yarn to slick music video style trappings and a John Woo inspired slow-mo shooting (where the sudden bang is followed by a gracefully slow arching of the body backwards through the air) to some brief jump cuts, and heavily edited, imagined scenes, the directorial style is decidedly uneven. At one point the characters are at each other's throats or in some sort of peril, and the next they're all boogying down to Outkast's "Hey Ya" (that only proves one shouldn't include a popular song when one's shooting since it will likely seem passé by the time the film is released).
The oddness is particularly true regarding the apparent direction given to Giovanni Ribisi ("Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," "The Other Sister") in playing his oddball character. One can't tell if the affected performance is supposed to be that of a throwback, villainous period character, a person with a Napoleon complex, or maybe just a so cool he must be an android type, but the character clashes rather badly with the others (and I'm not talking in terms of dramatic conflict).
Not that the rest are anything great. Dennis Quaid ("In Good Company," "The Alamo") may still have the ladies swooning over his still trim and cut 50-year-old body, but his reluctant leader character is nothing novel.
A rainbow coalition of other performers are present to embody such a diverse cast of characters, but few of them -- including the likes of Miranda Otto ("Danny Deckchair," the "Lord of the Rings" films), Tyrese Gibson ("2 Fast 2 Furious," "Baby Boy"), Hugh Laurie (the "Stuart Little" films), Kevork Malikyan ("Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "Belly of the Beast") and Jacob Vargas ("Traffic," "Selena") -- can do much with their sketchily drawn characters other than show their glistening, shirtless bodies (that strangely are invulnerable to sunburn).
The film's exterior villains -- some desert smugglers or the like -- are never personified and conveniently appear and disappear at the filmmakers' whim (gee, do you think they'll wait until the group tries to fly their reassembled plane before they launch their final attack).
Of course, the story is supposed to be about the conflict generated among supposed allies, something like a desert version of "12 Angry Men" (notwithstanding Otto being a lady). While there's plenty of that in the form of yelling, some fighting and even some shooting, the dramatic angle isn't that effective simply because we don't really care about any of the barely developed characters.
That said, if one can get past all of those problems and turn off one's higher cognitive processing, there's just enough here to make the film passably entertaining. Fans of reality shows (such as the now creaky "Survivor") and such may enjoy the loosely related plot elements, and there's certainly plenty of eye candy for the ladies.
Throw in a terrific opening crash sequence and other moments of action and you nearly come away with a mindlessly enjoyable diversion. Those looking for a taut story, good performances or consistent direction, however, will likely have their hopes for such elements evaporating faster than a drop of expensive bottled water in the stifling and unforgiving desert heat. "Flight of the Phoenix" rates as a 4.5 out of 10.
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