The Flight of the Phoenix

A true classic. 14 men on a small low budget plane working for an oil company that cares as much about their employees as one might expect. So, the plane goes down in the middle of the desert, and the twelve survivors just wait to die. James Stewart is the pilot who feels responsible, but so does his navigator played by Richard Attenborough. Meanwhile, we wonder about the other characters. We expect Ernest Borgnine, Dan Duryea, and George Kennedy to be the key players, but they relax into the backdrop, except for Borgnine, who soon fades into the backdrop. Instead, it's Ronald Frasier as a career soldier, and Hardy Kruger as an engineer, who become the key players. The engineer claims he can build an aeroplane. Little by little, Townes (Stewart) and Lou (Attenborough) begin to believe the engineer. They see his designs. They get hope. They begin to build the plane. Then, a bit of dark comedy unfolds as they find out more about the engineer. I dare not spoil it. The characters are awesome, even those who seem to be just extras, but they aren't extras. In fact, these extras (Kennedy and Duryea) give life to the film. It's probably because they were big name players that they were chosen to be the most minor players, to give the viewer the sense that minor players are real people. Even "Rat Bags", who appears to be the most brutal of the characters, displays humanity and sorrow when his friend decides to walk out with Peter Finch to seek help. There's a lot of theatrics and drama, and the setting is the exotic desert, but still the setting doesn't change, yet there is never a dull moment. Much like "12 Angry Men", there is always some animation of emotion and theater that keeps even the most attention deficit disorder person infatuated with the story. I know, because I am as "attention deficit" as they come.