“Like the Plane, Stays Grounded Most of the Time”

What you have here is your basic airplane crash/survival/rebuild the plane story with few original elements and even fewer surprises. A remake of the 1965 movie starring Jimmy Stewart, The Flight of the Phoenix is basically a Dennis Quaid vehicle picture, and even though he turns in his normal, polished performance, it’s still not enough to salvage this floundering premise.

Captain Frank Towns (Quaid) is the cargo plane pilot assigned to pick up the crew and equipment from a recently closed mine in Mongolia. As fate would have it, the mother of all sand storms (al a The Mummy and Hidalgo) assails the craft and violently forces it off course. The best effect in the film shows the left propeller spinning forward off its mount and slicing into the metallic hull just behind the cockpit. After an intense crash sequence, the survivors are faced with a dire tableau; the plane is half buried in the ubiquitous sands of the Gobi desert. To make matters worse, their water reserves and supplies are frighteningly low and the desert heat is unbearable.

Somewhere along the way, they decide to rebuild the plane with the guidance of weasel-eyed Elliot (Giovanni Ribinsi from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow). To add spice to the manual labor section of the film is an electrical storm, a mutiny and a run-in with the local nomads.

The only part of the movie that had real potential was the conflict between Frank and Elliot, who develops a God complex: after all, he knows how to build planes (toy model planes, it’s later discovered), and immediately takes to ordering everyone around. The most gratifying scene in the movie is when Frank hauls off and knocks Elliot on his butt. That scene, the Clinton-style pre-flight check and a few other random jokes are the only elements that make the movie even remotely memorable.

The movie’s resolution is particularly predictable and ends much too abruptly. So much is left unresolved in the film, like, how much gas do they have? And, are they going to fly all the way strapped onto the wings (and wouldn’t four people on one wing and two on the other imbalance the jury-rigged plane?). And are they going to kill Elliot when they get back or just loosen his straps and let gravity do the job? Actually, that would make for a more interesting story than the one presented here. The Flight of the Phoenix is one movie that shouldn’t have been resurrected from the ash heap.

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Action, Adventure, Drama