..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Flight of the Phoenix
Directed by John Moore
From an entertainment standpoint - and ultimately, that's the only standpoint that really counts - there is nothing particularly wrong with the 2004 remake of Flight of the Phoenix, a 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Widescreen Edition (2227463, $30). The movie has its little inanities (there is a character with a patch over one eye, who is called, 'Patch'), and the continuity is strained when the plane, which has crashed in the Gobi desert, will be completely covered by sand in one scene and then be totally uncovered in the next scene, but basically, the only thing wrong with it is that it isn't different enough from the first movie and has much less interesting stars. In this corner, James Stewart. In that corner, Dennis Quaid. Who do you pick? There is an added moment of suspense at the end, there are updated effect sequences, and there's a girl, but such changes are transparent. The basic idea is an enjoyable one-the oil workers who have crashed in the middle of nowhere build themselves an alternate plane out of the pieces that haven't been wrecked-with the inevitable fights over water and authority and that sort of thing stringing the drama along. That much, the film delivers, and while you can pick the movie apart artistically to the point where only bones are left, you can also just sit back and have an enjoyable time watching the characters suffer and succeed.
The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine and details are crisp. The DVD has both a DTS track and a 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track, and both are excellent. The bass activity has a real good punch to it, and the surround effects are crisply defined, especially in DTS. The 113-minute program has an alternate French audio track in standard stereo and optional English and Spanish subtitles. There are 15 minutes of alternate and deleted scenes, including explanations of several story gaps and a substantially more elaborate climax, and there is a good 42-minute collection of behind-the-scenes footage.
Director John Moore, producers John Davis and Wyck Godfrey, and production designer Patrick Lam supply a commentary track. Moore also talks over the deleted scenes. Sometimes, mediocre movies will have very good commentary tracks because there is no mystery to their artistic process, and that is kind of the case here. The talk is full of usable information about how scenes were set up and executed-how they hid the crew and kept the sand free of footprints and tire tracks, how Moore named the three cameras he was using by colors rather than identifying them as 'A,''B,' and 'C' so the actors wouldn't play to the primary camera in a scene, and how they all kind of suffered together spending so much time away from their homes (the film was shot in Namibia). They also praise the skills of co-star Giovanni Ribisi, comparing him to Robert De Niro.
But the talk also, somewhat inadvertently, underscores the film's shortcomings. "One of the first things my wife said when were remaking it, she was like, 'Are their faces going to be peeling off in the middle of the desert? I don't want to watch that.'" "That's true, because it had to look rough, but what you didn't want to do was distract or detract from their emotional journey. It wasn't about peeling skin and exhaustion and sunburn. I mean, obviously, it's there, it's reflected in the way they look. It's sort of an old-fashioned choice, but I very much wanted the people to concentrate on what was happening to the guys emotionally rather than just physically, because the physicality is something that, if you make that choice, not everyone is going to be able to identify or key into it. But emotionally, you can identify, and pick a character and follow him and feel what he's feeling."
On the epilog snapshots that play during the credit scroll: "The original ending of the movie, the plane flew into the sunset, but audiences…" "People, and I think it's a wonderful tribute to the actors, that people were so fond of them that they wanted to know what happened. They wanted to know that they got out and they made it, so look, it's not the most inventive, it's not the most original idea in the history of cinema, but it was just a little wink to the audience to say, 'They made it, and they're all okay.'"
April 26, 2005
DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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