Year of Release: 1965Country of Origin: USA
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Krüger, Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy
Plot outline: After a plane crash in the Sahara, with no chance of rescue, one of the survivors says he's an airplane designer and they can make a flyable plane from the wreckage (IMDb).
In a gripping tale of courage, resourcefulness and determination, The Flight of the Phoenix strips bare the morals of the survivors. Robert Aldrich has fashioned a tense, boys-own-adventure type story from nothing more than dust, great acting and impressive stunt flying. The script is strong enough to gradually build to successive, heart-stopping moments without dawdling or resorting to cliche (particularly impressive when you remember that the movie began with a bang). Standing out from the crowd with excellent performances, James Stewart and Richard Attenborough provide a central axis around which the other characters revolve and interact. Attenborough's character, Lew, is particularly interesting since he provides the glue which holds everything together, a pivotal role. The scenery is impressive, in the sense of the mindless force of nature and endless sand dunes, even though the film crew went nowhere near Arabia. It's interesting to speculate on how you would cope in these circumstances but, of course, the $64,000 question is whether you would even think of constructing a plane out of the wreckage of the first? I'm not sure that I would have done, but I will now! (DC)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
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