Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2004
- Take a pot shot but be warned.

 For material that could make its reading a multi-layered experience, nevertheless Flight of the Phoenix is a lesson in how to write a modern Hollywood blockbuster screenplay. Not that all scripts from Tinsel Town are negligibly uninspiring; this one is afloat while crash landing, a movie that has a lot of seemingly important action but you have to ask, so what?

 Phoenix is based on the 1965 movie screenplay that starred heavy weight actors James Stewart and Ernest Borgnine, a movie adaptation of the novel. The remake has the pleasing flavour of intriguing ideas.

 An oil company plane crashes in the Gobi Desert near Mongolia. Ten people, nine of them men, are on board (the woman is The Lord of the Rings’ Miranda Otto). The opening crash sequence into a sandstorm is magnificently filmed and edited, an elementary and enjoyable Hollywood Act I extravaganza (think: Final Destination 2). Then it becomes a Never Cry Wolf cum Alive survival of the fittest thematic point destined for limbo as the stubborn captain Frank Towns (a solid Dennis Quaid) does nothing to escape. But a mysterious crew member Elliot (Giovanni Ribisi) has a plan to reconstruct the plane within the 30 days of their water supplies drying up if Towns will agree to it.

 A closer reading appears to say how the American presence is not meant to be there in the first place (echoed by smart talking Elliot, the only character with layers in the movie carried adroitly by Ribisi). Americans get into trouble when in other people’s territories. This is signified by the appearances of suspicious nomadic Mongolians. America, loosely speaking, must rebuild from the ashes of its mistakes. For some this is relevant contemporary politics.

 But even on the level of staying alive and taking responsibility for that while encountering God’s silence (pertinent considering perceptions of current events in South East Asia) Phoenix suffers from a one-dimensional treatment.