Review: The Flight of the Phoenix
So, we have a bomb at the US box office, coupled with a seemingly exciting trailer. A perfect case to check for trailer sickness. Could this be one of those undiscovered gems, or is it the ever existent illness this movie deserves.
Well, while the movie’s tagline says “Out of the ashes, hope will rise”, the truth is somewhat different. It’s just a smoking pile of rubbish. Nothing rises from it, I can assure you.
From the first five minutes of the movie you can find out many things. Acting is not important. Dialogue is not important. Characters are not important. A couple of more minutes, and you see two writers cramming every cliche available in the two long hours. It feels like a contest, and a small notepad to keep track of them would not suffice. In the end, all you can do is laugh along with this total failure.
The trailer suggested some action here and there, but predictably, the exact amount in the trailer is in the movie. Nothing more, nothing less. With nothing on the screen to focus on, the final mistake is a hard one to swallow. The only female in the movie is the highly unattractive Miranda Otto, and for that, dropping the producers in the middle of the Sahara with no food and water would be the only fitting punishment.3-.