flightofphoe65

Jimmy Stewart flew B-24 Liberators over Nazi-occupied Europe in World War II. These planes were
massive, four-engine bombers that dropped tons of bombs throughout the war and eventually
halted the German war machine. Before that, Stewart was training other pilots in the U.S. Army Air
Corps to fly B-17 Flying Fortresses.

However, Stewart wanted a combat assignment like any other American and no cushy treatment for
being a movie star. He got it, served in the Air Force until 1968 and even flew missions in Vietnam.
He never made a movie about World War II. He never talked about his experiences. He lived it,
and that was enough.

“Flight of the Phoenix” is as close at it gets to seeing Stewart in a war film. In the movie, his
character is a grizzled, hardened, aging veteran pilot and it just so happens that’s exactly what he
was in real life. He fakes nothing in this movie. No surprise that such authenticity from an
accomplished actor combined with good filmmaking and an amazing story results in a stellar movie
that has no equal.

Stewart and Richard Attenborough are pilot and co-pilot of a cargo plane that is set to bring some
oil workers back from the Middle Eastern desert. A sandstorm whips up and the plane takes a
nosedive into the wasteland. Now stranded and with no hope of rescue, the crew of the airplane
and its passengers must try to survive and get along, all the while running ever lower on food and
water. There seems to be no escape, until a German engineer on board comes up with the idea of
building a new plane out of the crashed one. If it works, they’ll survive. If it doesn’t, then they just
blew through their provisions faster and death will come more quickly.

As the makeshift plane takes shape, tensions mount. “Flight of the Phoenix” is an amazing study of
relationships in a crisis situation. Director Robert Aldrich, veteran of “The Angry Hills,” “Vera Cruz”
and “The Dirty Dozen,” keeps all of the focus on the faces and looks into the minds of these men.
Each character is distinct, every face a lamdscape from which the viewer sees logic and suffering in
a different way.

Even more brilliant, as the characters become more and more dehydrated, their behavior becomes
more magnified or changes altogether and we can see them deteriorate as Attenborough begins to
laugh maniacally at impending doom, Ernest Borgnine saunters off into the desert without a thought
and Stewart becomes less and less sure of his decisions.

The film showcases the ultimate worst-case scenario in grand fashion without any gloss or
forgiveness. This is a movie with dirt under its fingernails and shows what lengths people will go to
for survival.