One of Britain's most popular post-war novelists, Elleston Trevor's work was hallmarked throughout by superb writing, great plotting, and strong characterisation. Little wonder, then, that 'Flight of The Phoenix' was snapped up for the movies nigh on half a century back.
Now the book and the original screenplay derived from it are reborn again in this new version, which for value-for-money possibly exceeds the novel's published price by offering not merely an aviation disaster but a cinematic disaster as well.
A failed "entertainment" from beginning to end, this is a Phoenix which ought to be mandatory viewing for every student enrolled in every film school, a dismal stringing together of visual and narrative clichés lit by a directorial illumination that goes from dim to extinguished within the first 15 minutes of screen time.
The characters are invested with nothing at all to excite an audience's sympathies and the performers do nothing at all to make amends -- including Quaid, who evidently took his role too literally and thus stays on auto-pilot throughout.
One of the great performances of the original movie was Hardy Kruger's: sly, confident, abrasive, yet vulnerable. One of the worst performances of this movie is by the actor recruited to Kruger's role: even the most cursory glance at Trevor's original text shows that he neither wrote nor intended the 'saviour' of the stranded group to be a demented Hobbit.
Not for the first time where remakes are concerned do you get to wonder how such projects are ever green-lit.
Score: zero out of 10.
Now the book and the original screenplay derived from it are reborn again in this new version, which for value-for-money possibly exceeds the novel's published price by offering not merely an aviation disaster but a cinematic disaster as well.
A failed "entertainment" from beginning to end, this is a Phoenix which ought to be mandatory viewing for every student enrolled in every film school, a dismal stringing together of visual and narrative clichés lit by a directorial illumination that goes from dim to extinguished within the first 15 minutes of screen time.
The characters are invested with nothing at all to excite an audience's sympathies and the performers do nothing at all to make amends -- including Quaid, who evidently took his role too literally and thus stays on auto-pilot throughout.
One of the great performances of the original movie was Hardy Kruger's: sly, confident, abrasive, yet vulnerable. One of the worst performances of this movie is by the actor recruited to Kruger's role: even the most cursory glance at Trevor's original text shows that he neither wrote nor intended the 'saviour' of the stranded group to be a demented Hobbit.
Not for the first time where remakes are concerned do you get to wonder how such projects are ever green-lit.
Score: zero out of 10.