User Reviews

It is not just because of Robert Aldrich Directing that this movie is a must see. James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, George Kennedy, and a fine cast have a lot to do with it. The solid material and script the film is based on has a lot to say for the film.

This plane crash film tells the story of humans surviving and then trying to pick themselves up after a plane crash in the desert. Stewart plays the pilot and the hero but in an Aldrich type of scenario he is the anti-hero. He admits his error causes the plane to crash. As it is obviously an old plane there is some conjecture to it all being his fault but he takes the blame anyhow.

The cast and direction here are excellent. It is great that Turner Classic Movies has started running this as I have to admit this is a film I had not seen. The film is a bit long though when you consider rebuilding a wrecked plane, you have to factor that in. The movie avoids the drag of length with sold performances and a good script.

I have just watched the 2004 version of this film, although entertaining and by no means a bad film, it lacks the realism and grittiness of this 1965 original. I found the 2004 film to be a sanitised version, it failed to convey to the viewer the intolerable heat of the desert and the desperate fatigue and water and food deprivation suffered by the crash victims. This original version also has minor sub plots and the characters are more complex and dare I say, better acted? This film was made at the tail end of when Hollywood still produced class films and used talented actors, who were masters of their craft and not just 'celebrities'.

These comments are partly inspired by other comments and the message boards. This film presents a hypothetical survival situation and does a great job of showing how innovation and persistence bring the survivors through. Strengths and weaknesses are plausibly portrayed in characters who have depth and a mix of vices and virtues. That Sgt Watson does not suffer for his sin is just the sort of thing that makes this an adult movie. That's what "real life" is like. Often people who do the wrong thing seem to go unpunished, or worse, to actually benefit. You could get a whole other novel out of the Sgt's subsequent life. There was a real survivor story a few years back where a trimaran, the "Rose-Noelle" capsized, and the crew existed on the overturned craft for many weeks. There were tensions between people. Each individual seemed to be weak in some ways and strong in others - eg one guy was very despondent and was often treated with contempt by 2 others, but he was also far more patient at fishing, he caught a lot more than anyone else. The skipper/owner kept up his leadership role and the others resented him being hard on them (I thought no harder than was needed). When the trimaran eventually ran ashore, and they were picked up by emergency services, at least 2 of the crew immediately separated themselves from the skipper and never contacted him afterward, according to his book. When these two wrote their own book, they stated that they had taken food from the common store when they weren't being watched. I was flabbergasted that they would admit such a thing without feeling any guilt. They didn't express any anyway.

In the 70s I read a self-improvement book about so-called "non-eroneous" people who would never worry about what other people thought about them or what they did. I now believe the old saying that "Only very competent men, or very beautiful women, or very rich people of either gender can afford to be totally forthright all the time." Hardy Kruger's character was a wonderful example of the "non-erroneous" person. His view was that he worked harder, he planned everything, he was essential to the project, so it was OK for him to take more water than the others. He openly admitted it when confronted by the pilot (James Stewart). However he changed his behaviour because he saw that he had to get people on-side if the project was to succeed. That a model aircraft engineers skills were as good as a full-size engineers was self-evident to him.

He was not without his faults however. During the engine-starting sequence, he rather lost his nerve. He was not able to trust the best man for the task (the pilot), to do the task, without trying to interfere. Hardy Kruger is one of my favorite actors, very versatile, he always managed to please even when cast in utter tripe like Hatari!

A twin-engine propeller airplane, carrying a group of oil company people to a Saharan outpost, crashes in the African desert…

On board, a handful of disparate characters: a jovial pessimist, a noble doctor, a 'frantic' fellow, a distrustful bitter pilot, determined to contradict most suggested plans; a British military officer who reacts in the only way he knows; an insubordinate sergeant who refuses to take any risk; an eccentric airplane designer proposing a seemingly impossible goal… and a nervy navigator who tries to hold the group together…

The marooned survivors (with no hopes of being found or rescued) realize their best hope is the 'impossible': to accept the task of building a smaller plane, a "Phoenix," from the wreckage of the old…

The depiction of the construction is fascinating as much of the true characters of the men (facing the savagely violent environment) come out under the threat of thirst, hunger, and exposure… The degree of their weakness, consternation, arrogance, selfishness, and cowardice is successfully described…

Aldrich tries to build a film filled with self-sacrifice, crazed arguments, and, above all else, a slow descent into foolish acts by all… He keeps us in constant suspense, wondering if the rebuild plane will get successfully off the ground?

It's TWELVE ANGRY MEN trapped in the desert.

A cargo plane carrying a handful of military personnel and civilians crashlands in the Sahara. No radio contact, 130 miles off course, with no rescue prospects, food and water for eleven days... One of the passengers claims to be an aircraft designer and outlines a plan to rebuild the plane from its remaining parts. Thus their simultaneous hope and damnation begins.

Classic premise, moved from a desert island to just a desert.

Written by Lukas Heller and Trevor Dudley Smith, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX is a unique little gem, directed by Robert Aldrich, who would go on to direct the classic testosterone war film, THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), but unfortunately also has the lamentable APACHE (1954) to his credit.

Hardy Kruger is German designer and taskmaster, Dorfmann, who maintains he has worked out all the drag coefficients and stress factors for a rebuild; James Stewart is cantankerous American leatherneck pilot Towns, who has "flown every crate ever built," and disagrees with Dorfmann on just about everything, imbued with that American idealism that all it takes to be right is a good left hook and an unwavering belief, against all evidence, that he is right. Richard Attenborough is Towns's co-pilot, Lew, the mediator between Dorfmann and Towns.

Peter Finch (long before he was mad as hell) is a British officer who believes he can walk across the desert to safety; Ernest Borgnine is a big baby, diagnosed as "mentally incompetent"; George Kennedy is along for the ride, Ian Bannen is the jovial Scottish bigot.

Each character is well-defined and their clash of personalities, ideologies and solutions is what makes PHOENIX such compelling viewing; the tension is palpable, first on whether the men will survive, then during the inevitable disputes that arise over water rations, blame for the crash, leadership, whether to waste their few days striving to build a plane that might not fly, overarched by the classic he-man struggle of alpha leadership between Towns and Dorfmann.

Like the mythical bird that rises from its ashes, one of the men christens the rebuilt section of plane "Phoenix" by painting its name on the fuselage.

Dorfmann is a pragmatist and oversees the Phoenix re-building like a machine, factoring in unemotionally that one of the injured men is going to die, so will not need any more rations and needn't be figured as payload along the wings; while Towns regards all his passengers as humans, who should all strive to be alive at the end of their goal for their goal to mean something. Lew helps Towns finds the compromise - that allowing the men to work on a goal will give them morale and turn them into survival machines.

Amazing that amidst the scorching expanse of desert heat, we yet feel such claustrophobia; as the sands close in, as their rations run out, as the makeshift aircraft is pronounced ready for takeoff, Towns and Lew discover Dorfmann was not lying when he said he was an aircraft designer... he just left out a key fact about what type of aircraft he was a designer of.

It is such an astounding twist to the plot that Lew echoes all our emotions by belly-laughing and weeping at the same time, "We could die here - or we could die in that thing..."

Things could be worse: they could have been in ISHTAR.

--Review by Poffy The Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).

Robert Aldrich directed this now classic adventure yarn. A rag tag group of men crash land in the Sahara with little hope of surviving unless they either walk out or build a new airplane & fly out. That's the plot in its entirety. James Stewart is the pilot, a stubborn curmudgeon who thinks making a new plane is idiotic. Hardy Krüger is the engineer who tries to prove him wrong...though his experience at building planes is rather sketchy. Richard Attenborough is Stewart's right hand man and voice of reason. Peter Finch is a by-the-book British captain and Ronald Fraser his not so brave underling. There's enough suspense and angry confrontations to keep this movie moving at a fast clip. The excellent music score by Aldrich regular Frank De Vol is a major asset as is the cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc. The supporting cast includes Ernest Borgnine as an unstable oil rig worker, George Kennedy, Dan Duryea and Christian Marquand as a level headed doctor.