Flight of the Phoenix (DVD)
The running time is 1 hr. 45 mins..
Flight of the Phoenix tells the story of a group of failed oil drillers who have just been fired from their duties in the Gobi desert. Taking them home is captain Frank Towns (Quaid) and his faithful crew as they have been sent to retrieve the group with their cargo plane.
Unfortunately as the pick up goes smoothly, the flight home does not as the plane is forced to crash land thanks to a wild sand storm. Now, in the middle of the desert with a limited food and water supply the group of survivors must work together to figure a way home, and thanks to one wild idea to build a new plane out of the crashed one hope is restored but the environmental elements of the desert are not so hopeful.
You can tell by the above description that this is an action film and while it delivers action you have got to ask yourself just how many sand storms you can take before you say, "Enough already!"
You will hear it on the audio commentary that no one wants to just sit around and watch people build a plane in the middle of the desert, so action and obstacles are necessary to increase the intrigue. While this is true it soon becomes so boring that you start to lose any and all interest in the group's future.
I was ready to write this film off completely until the final moments of the movie actually beat me down enough to accept it as a decent film, but that is not to say you should go out and buy it.
As for the DVD features, the audio commentary is a bit blasé, but this DVD does present a very good making-of featurette that is told with limited on screen narration as it simply just follows the cast and crew as the film is being made with the most entertaining of directors to watch in the process. Director John Moore rants and raves his way through the entire production hitting extreme highs and get the f**k out of his way lows. The Irish filmmaker is a total ass and to watch him boss his crew around in such a way is maddening. If I was his boom operator I would deliver a swift kick to the groin and a recommendation to start on a Slim Fast diet ASAP, it doesn't look like his time in the desert washed away any waistline inches.
Finally there is a batch of deleted and extended scenes, which are separated into two different sections as opposed to lumped together. This is pretty much your run of the mill group of deleted scenes but there are a couple in there that could have been added to the feature.
Aside from some poor editing and a couple of redundancies Flight of the Phoenix is an okay watch. I wouldn't recommend you buy it, but I do think it would work well as a Friday night rental.