Flight of the Phoenix

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 6.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 6.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for some language, action and violence. Nothing too horrible but some disturbing scenes - one of a man being shot point blank and one of a man falling from a plane onto the sand below. No gratuitous blood and guts or anything but not necessary.

Story

This remake of the 1965 film of the same title features a crew of oil workers en route home over the Gobi dessert. The plane crashes due to a massive sandstorm and the survivors decide to try to build a new plan out of the wreckage, but must deal with dessert bandits and each other (especially the jerk in charge) in order to accomplish their goal before it is too late. Nothing particularly noteworthy other than the quasi-villain who is their de facto leader - this character never really takes us anywhere useful. His borderline personality never really does anything ultimate for the story and is quite annoying.

Suppositions

World view wise this is pretty neutral. There are some bland religious overtones here or there but they are inconsequential. There are quite a few imagination stretching moments and suspension of disbelief will be required to enjoy the film.

Significance

The message is pretty easy to see here: we need to overcome our differences and band together to survive. Nothing dazzling. Unfortunately this mediocre plot is marred by a problem with the quasi-villain . . .

[SPOILER WARNING!]

. . . who kills an enemy in one scene and at first everyone is really mad and calls him a murderer. Five minutes later when everything works as he had planned they all seem to forget about it and in the afterward we discover he ends up getting a huge job out of his work with the plane. This is disturbing and should have been dealt with (and it probably could have considering the circumstances). This is just too big of a deal for everyone to just blow off once the plane works.