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BY TOM MEEK
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In this honorable but inferior remake of Robert Aldrich’s 1965 survival saga, the desert in which the ill-fated plane crashes has been moved from the Sahara to the Gobi, but there’s still the oil-rig outpost and the marauding nomads. Perhaps the biggest change is the role of Frank Towns, the airplane captain and de facto leader of the marooned party. In the original, he was played by Jimmy Stewart with cantankerous righteousness; here we get (a ripped) Dennis Quaid as a worry wart with control issues. It makes for greater tension early on, but the B-list actors can’t match Aldrich’s ensemble cast, which boasted Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, and Ernest Borgnine. Most ill-fitting is Giovanni Ribisi as the airplane designer at odds with Towns — Hardy Krüger’s 1965 performance is hard to beat. This Phoenix does have its moments, though, and the direction by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines) is taut and puts the cinematic advances of the past four decades to good use. Like the reconstructed plane of the title, it takes off, but it doesn’t soar. (112 minutes) At the Entertainment, Flagship, Harbour Mall, Holiday, Providence Place 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
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