This is a story about a crew of oil diggers that are being brought back from the desert because of their lack of productivity. Captain Towns (Dennis Quaid) and A.J (Tyrese Gibson) are sent to retrieve the workers and their machinery. A terrible storm arises and the plane is too heavy to fly over it. Towns attempts to go around the storm, but more swells of sand form into a massive trap. The plane crashes in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles away from help. Towns decides to wait out the search, but the stragglers don't like their 5% of being found. An outcast to the group, also an airplane engineer, overlooks the plane and convincing everyone that a new plane can be built for survival. It's the only chance that they have and they go to work on it. At its finish no one believes that it can be done, and then a secret is revealed. The engineer is actually the Chief Engineer of model airplanes, the largest of which had a six foot wingspan. I'm going to waste the obvious ending and say that they ended up driving it right off of the cliff and flying back to safety. How cliched.
This might have been the worst movie I have watched in a long time... Action? I don't think so. The most exciting thing about the movie was probably the very beginning where Quaid is trying to guide is plane through a sea of sand storms and the plane has to take an emergency landing crashing hard into the dunes of the desert. The movie was very slow and methodical. I advise that no one even attempts to watch this movie and if you already have... I'm sorry that you wasted your money on this garbage....
"Flight of the Phoenix" opens December 17, 2004 and is rated PG13. Adventure. Directed by John Moore. Written by Lukas Heller (1965 screenplay), Scott Frank. Starring Jared Padalecki, Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Giovanni Ribisi, Hugh Laurie.
