The Good
An uplifting tale about what you can accomplish when you work together.
The Bad
Not a lot of extras on this Blu-ray release.
Flight of the Phoenix is a pretty simplistic tale about a group of people who crash land in the Mongolian desert. Staring certain death and desert bandits in the face, this group decides to rebuild the airplane they were traveling on so they can flee the desert. This is certainly a tough proposition to be sure, but led by Frank Towns (Dennis Quaid), A.J. (Tyrese Gibson) and model builder Elliot (Giovanni Ribisi), the rest of the people that are stranded eventually come around (for the most part) to this being their only salvation. As you can guess, there is a great deal of growth to be had during a process like this. The characters learn about themselves but they also learn about one another. Eventually, things play out how they usually do in these Hollywood movies, but part of the fun is seeing these films reach their destination.
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Features
Handling this track is director John Moore, Production Designer Patrick Lumb and producers Wyck Godfrey and John Davis. If you want to hear behind the scenes anecdotes and what it was like to work with “Dennis” or “Tyrese” then you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Should you be an aspiring filmmaker and you want to know how to pull of a desert production, this track should certainly help you. Though why they didn’t just talk over the whole commentary track is anybody’s guess, but what they do say here is actually pretty interesting. I just think you need to be inclined to want to hear it.
Video
2.35:1 - 1080p/MPEG 2. As you can guess Blu-ray and the desert go pretty nicely together. There is a great deal of color to the images on screen. Whether we are seeing some amazing panoramic view, or just a close-up on one of the extras, the image quality is nothing short of stunning. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised as this movie is only 3 years old, but the look of these Blu-ray discs constantly impresses me each time I get the chance to sit down and screen a title in that format.
Audio
HD Lossless - 5.1. This being a Hollywood movie, I expected the sound to be good and it was. I really liked the use of ambient sounds as I feel this had a pretty strong hand in bringing us into this story. The score was triumphant and uplifting but it didn’t feel that stale to me. Perhaps had I seen this film in the theater I might not have felt this way, but as it was things played very solidly in the audio department.
Package
Quaid, Tyrese, Ribisi and Miranda Otto are front and center on this Blu-ray cover. Below them is a shot of their plane which looks to be flying through flames. The back cover gives us a well written description of what this movie is about, some pictures from the show, a Special Features listing and system specs. There isn’t anything too great about this cover but it looks decent enough.
Final Word
I remember when this movie came out in theaters and I remember my late mother thinking that it was good. As she loved the TV show House, she was all aglow over the performance of Hugh Laurie (Ian) in this film. This really wasn’t a reason for me to run out and see it, but watching the film on Blu-ray disc was probably a pretty comparable experience. There isn’t anything too special about this film from a motion picture standpoint. The story it tells is one that we have heard and seen before, so it’s not like we come away from this experience with some amazing sense of enlightenment. However, it does look good on Blu-ray disc and it features all the requisite movie moments to have people rooting for the characters on screen to succeed.
Should you be interested in having a piece of pure entertainment in your Blu-ray disc collection, Flight of the Phoenix will certainly satisfy that desire.
Flight of the Phoenix was released December 17, 2004.
