Stripped-down remake of Robert Aldrich's near-perfect survival adventure of 1966, about a new plane constructed from the wreckage of an old one in the middle of the desert. Among the things stripped away are all vestiges of character and thematic interest: no more humanism versus pragmatism; no more lingering hostilities of the Second World War; no more division between military and civilian; no more tension between the old school and the new; no James Stewart (a pilot for real in the Second World War as well as in The Spirit of St. Louis and Strategic Air Command on the screen), no Richard Attenborough, no Hardy Kruger, no Peter Finch, no Ronald Fraser, no Ian Bannen, no Ernest Borgnine, no George Kennedy, no Dan Duryea. And nothing put in their place. Nothing, that is, except a computer-cartoon sandstorm and plane crash, a handful of pop songs, and a lusterless cast assembled for demographic rather than dramatic purposes: a headstrong woman ("This is bullshit!") where the original cast was all-male (save for Barrie Chase in a momentary hallucination), plus a couple of blacks, a Mexican, a Middle or Far Easterner, a virtual Rainbow Coalition. Director John Moore covers the same distance in half an hour less, hitting none of the right notes but hitting them faster and louder. Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Tyrese Gibson, Miranda Otto, Hugh Laurie. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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