Flight of the Phoenix takes place almost entirely in a single setting. That setting is the middle of the desert somewhere on the outskirts of China. Surprisingly, that aspect of the film is not that bad. Despite its location, the film manages to constantly be doing something with itself. After an airplane has crashed, with most of its 10 or so passengers surviving, the passengers begin to argue with how to deal with the situation. One guy runs off, another gets lost and dies, pilot Frank Towns (Dennis Quaid), decides to stay put to preserve water, and the mysterious Elliot (Giovanni Ribisi) proposes that they build a new plane out of the old one.

So, for the rest of the film, they build a plane. Props to Pheonix for keeping an uninteresting story mildly engaging, but to do that it often goes to wild extremes. The passengers are always arguing about something that, despite the stress of the situation, is still hard to believe that they would be fighting about. Multiple storms move across them while they’re there – all of them just strong enough to create some tension and just weak enough to allow the story to continue.

Flight of the Phoenix is an amicable film, but characters and situations create more of a spectacle than a drama. There’s really nothing more to the story than a few mild thoughts on hope and survival. I absolutely hate to say it, but because it’s really the only thing that comes to mind: despite a few bumps and thrills throughout Flight of the Pheonix, it never really gets up off the ground.

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