![]() And the aerial cinematography is brilliant. Where the film excels is going behind the scenes of aviation, showing us all the moving parts that must function smoothly for even an uneventful flight to transit safely, let alone those that develop an emergency. The film cuts between the plane, military command centers, air traffic controllers, the families, first responders, amateur flight analysts, and social media in an effective ramp-up of tension. Simultaneously, the plane’s oxygen supply is running low, and the passengers begin to pass out and panic. The captain must then steer the plane through severe storms, with little to no visibility, while maintaining a dangerously low altitude. After the window shatters at 32,000 feet, the plane drops 8,000 feet before the experienced captain regains control. The passengers receive even less consideration these include a mute woman, a selfish jerk in business class, a Tibetan mother and son, an American couple (who thankfully aren’t the Ugly variety), and a Chinese veteran returning to occupied Tibet to honor his fallen war buddies.īut after this nothing-special beginning, the film, well, takes off. These characters are about as fleshed-out as the descriptions indicate, with the exception of Yuan’s excellent, layered performance. We meet the modest title character (Zhang Hanyu, Operation Mekong), who promises to be back from Tibet that day to attend his young daughter’s birthday party (bad move), along with Cocky Copilot (Ou Hao), Serious Second Officer (Du Jiang), Rock-Steady Lead Flight Attendant (Yuan Quan), and various Giggly Young Flight Attendants. The film’s screenplay (by Yu Yonggyan, The Bravest) follows a standard disaster-movie structure, introducing the main characters first. The score also approaches sledgehammer levels of bombast on occasion. Respect procedures.” to coworkers in the cafeteria, for example. No regular adult human would intone “Respect life. The Captain thus does have some rah-rah moments in tribute to the people who saved the day, going overboard in a few places. It is just behind the ultrapatriotic My Country, My People at the box office, with more than $375 million earned to date worldwide, and well ahead of the Mount Everest-based The Climbers. The movie is one of three feature films released in conjunction with China’s October 1 National Day observance. The story of how the captain, the rest of the crew, the air traffic controllers, other pilots, and first responders worked to ensure a safe landing is the subject of a blockbuster new movie, unimaginatively titled The Captain, directed by Andrew Lau (the Infernal Affairs film series). On May 14, 2018, the cockpit window of Sichuan Airlines Flight 8633 shattered deep in the Himalayas, sucking the copilot halfway out of the plane and placing the rest of the 9-person crew and 119 passengers at risk for hypothermia, hypoxia, and worse.
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