The Flight of the Phoenix (2004
remake/DTS)
Picture: B-
Sound: B+ Extras: B- Film: B-
Remakes and revivals, especially when based on TV series,
are usually D.O.A. and greenlighted by money-crunching executives scared of
loosing their jobs and/or (but usually “and”) seriously cinematic
illiterate. After recently covering the
CD soundtrack and DVD of the 1965 Robert Aldrich film The Flight Of The
Phoenix, I could not believe Fox was ready to remake it. Matching a cast headed by James Stewart was
not going to be easy, but being as bold as the original was going to be the
real trick. Unknown director John Moore
was taking the helm and after several delays, the 2004 remake arrived.
It did not perform well at the box office, but was not
trashed outright by the press either.
Fox did some promotion, but it was no blitz. Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi and Tyrese
Gibson were leading the new cast. Quaid
in particular keeps getting burned over and over again, deserving more credit
and success that he has received. The
Day After Tomorrow came out earlier the same year and was one of his
too-rare blockbuster appearances. It
turns out this film was about as good and kept more of the edge and mortality
of the original than we have seen in any remake in a while.
It also does not hesitate to be what we would consider
politically incorrect and that it does this with a diverse cast is
impressive. It reflects post-9/11 anger
and is good at pushing the suspense envelope, though it still has a great
original story to fall back on. The
performances are also impressive, but actually shooting the film half a world
away is a big plus, keeping the digital work at bay. If you like the original film, or even love
it, you will be surprised how well this works out. There are no clever references to the
original as there were with the 1992 remake of Night & The City from
Irwin Winkler and Fox, but it still does an honorable enough job of recovering
old ground.
The original film on DVD would look as good if not better
than this remake as it was shot in the 1.85 X 1 aspect ratio, but this was shot
in 2.35 X 1 Panavision looking like Super 35mm and suffers softness and color
poorness in subtle ways throughout.
Brendan Galvin still makes some of the shots compelling, but outside of
the digital effects he has no control over which are limited, this film is no
improvement over the look of the first.
The sound on that older film disappointed, while the CD soundtrack
paired with Patton (reviewed elsewhere on this site) was somewhat of an
improvement, but no sonic gem either.
Frank DeVol did that score, while Marco Beltrami delivers equally
compelling music here. It has punch and
is not quite as militaristic, though it cannot avoid that Williams/Spielberg
“feel good” formula in too many places.
As overdone is the use of hit oldies, for an even less apparent
reason. They seem like they are inserted
as if they were relics of 1980s music placement thinking. The Dolby Digital 5.1 does not make much of a
difference either way.
However, when you play the film back in its DTS 5.1 mix,
you realize the sound designers and editors were being cleverer than
expected. The idea is that the sound mix
is being pumped up in a way that is more atypical than it first seemed. When Paramount reissued Top Gun as a
DTS DVD set, we were disappointed, as noted in the review elsewhere on the
site. Here, the film is actually upping
the ante and trying to be more than a disaster film. Unlike the atypical music-like mix on the
first Fast & The Furious or the MTV clip-vid formula long tired,
this film wants to keep the intensity going throughout and allows it to change
and adjust to the narrative and mood of the film. The result is an ambitious soundtrack that is
one of the best you will hear this year and was too sadly neglected at awards
time as not enough people had seen or heard the film. This will be one of those rare DVDs where
people will boast about how great the sound is and that the film is worth watching
for a change.
Extras include a commentary by Production Designer Patrick
Lumb, Moore, and co-Producers John Davis and Wyck Godfrey. This is decent, though one wishes a fifth
person was there to ask additional questions.
The Phoenix Diaries shows the behind-the-scenes of the film,
along with its editing and scoring. This
runs over a half-hour. Four extended
scenes and two deleted scenes that would have helped the film, but Fox wanted
to get their money back. Now that this
fine DVD is out there, that seems more likely.
Fox has also wisely made it one of their early High Definition Blu-ray
releases and one of the best titles they have issued to date. See more about it at:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5417/The+Flight+Of+The+Phoenix+(2004/Bl
- Nicholas Sheffo
