Flight of the Phoenix

Herald rating: * *

It's the movie about an old cargo plane in need of serious repair grounded somewhere in Asia. No it's not an RNZAF training film but the remake of the great 1965 survival thriller of the same name.

That first film had Jimmy Stewart and Richard Attenborough and other characters arguing their way to their rescue from a plane crash in the Sahara.

It was great. Even if its story of building a jerry-rigged aircraft from the wreckage inspired shows like Scrapheap Challenge a generation or two later.

This one has Dennis Quaid, Miranda Otto and other caricatures squabbling in the Gobi with all the dramatic tension of an episode of Survivor Mongolia. It's not so great.

It is impressive in some departments. The plane crash outdoes the original, even if, when the lumbering C-119 hits that sandstorm, the CGI-heavy shots mistake the cargo carrier for the Millennium Falcon.

And once the plane and its survivors are on the ground, all those sand dunes sure are pretty. Especially when the light - reflected off the pecs of various buffed supporting characters - catches them just so.

Maybe it's the heat or the lack of water but the survivors - Quaid and his co-pilot, sundry oil-exploration grunts, Otto's geologist, Laurie's company man who's just shut down its rig and Ribisi's mysterious blond nerd outsider - don't have a lot of intelligent things to say to each other.

As if they could hear themselves think anyway. This isn't a film that believes in eerie desert silence. Its soundtrack sounds like an iPod got stuck on the "random-but-literal" shuffle. The film opens with Johnny Cash's version of I've Been Everywhere; when they come up against some hostile locals it's time to cue Massive Attack.

There are themes delivered shouting and screaming along the way.

Firstly, that is it better to die attempting the impossible to survive than just evaporate having done nothing. Secondly, anyone riding a camel and wearing a headscarf, whether they be from the Sahara or the Gobi, is just out to get ya.

Thirdly, sometimes you have to listen to the nerds - Ribisi's Californian aero-geek is modelled on the petulant German of the original. His performance is both scene-stealing and annoying but at least it leaves an impression in a film that otherwise can't come up with any intelligent answer to the chief question about remaking a classic: Why?

CAST: Dennis Quaid, Giovanni Ribisi, Miranda Otto, Hugh Laurie

DIRECTOR: John Moore

RATING: M (medium level violence)

RUNNING TIME: 113 mins

SCREENING: Village, Hoyts cinemas