Flight crew
Original title : Echipaj (Russian, meaning Crew)
Language : Russian
Year of release : 2016
Run time : 2h12m
Genre : Disaster / Drama
Cast : Danila Kozlovsky, Anton Pampushnyy
The movie is a remake of the 1979 Soviet movie Air Crew, and is the 2nd Russian disaster movie ever made.
Pilot Alexey Gushchin is on a mission to deliver toys for charity, but his superior filled the plane with wedding gifts for a general’s daughter who’s getting married. As a storm is threatening the security of the plane, as it carries more than it can bear, his superior asks him to dump the charity cargo, which was lighter, instead of the heavy cars for the wedding. Gushchin throws the cars so they’d make it safely to the ground. This gets him fired.
Without a job, he goes to see his father he doesn’t have a good relationship with, as he’s a cold man. After he scolds him for not being able to keep a job, he calls one of his friends, and he finds him a pilot job for a small airline company that he has to pass an exam for.
He does his best at the exam, with what he’s given, but the pilot in the examination team who’s grading him, fails him (apparently this is his thing, he fails everyone). Until he takes the exam too, and sees there was no other way to react in the exam situation, and he passes him.
Leaving the exam,in the parking lot, Alexey meets Alexandra (honest to God, there were no other names, they were all taken?!), and helps her get her car out of the parking space were it was stuck. She offers him a ride, but because he tells her to shut up while he was trying to answer the phone, she throws him out.
Before getting on board of the plane, Alexey sees Alexandra, and realizes she’s a pilot too, and is trying to talk to her, but he’s always interrupted by someone else. One of the stewardesses he flies with, seems to like him, while a male stewardess, Andrei, likes her but she keeps on rejecting Andrei.
The pilot who finally passed him, Leonid, is married, and seems to have problems with his son, as they don’t get along and he abandoned school. He finds him an English teacher, but one day he and his wife find them in a compromising position.
Alexey starts dating Alexandra, but their relationship ends fast as he brings his work problems home, and kinda lashes out at her, and she won’t stand for it.
Taking a longer trip (the translation said one month), Leonid decides to take his son with him. He takes Alexey as his second pilot and Alexandra as his third.
On their way to the destination they receive a distress call from the Aleutic Islands where there’s been a volcanic eruption.
They agree to help the people there, and upon landing, they see the damage done by the earthquake. As they plan what to do, the places to go and the people to save, another earthquake takes place, doing even more damage, and the lava pours down the hills where they drive the buses with the people they save.
Leonid separated from his son, who went with Alexey, and due to the damage, he can’t wait any longer, or they won’t be able to depart, so he leaves with Alexandra and the people they rescued.
Alexey manages to save the people on the bus ahead of his, thinking fast in the heat of the moment. He realizes there’s another airport close to the area swallowed by the lava, and he decides to take everybody there, so they’d fly off the island.
The movie honestly bored me.
The first 50 minutes of the movie is just the character built up , and it was boring, like a drama, that’s why it’s so long!
What happens in the leading characters’ lives bored me, as it was nothing special. Alexey and Alexandra keep on going back and forth, they seem to be angry all the time and fight for no reason, breaking up. They looked like people who don’t match who were thrown in together in a weird experiment.
Leonid is an absent father, as he’s flying all the time, and his son is acting up.
After the one hour marker the action starts. There’s a scene in which they take the passengers from one plane onto the other, as Leonid’s plane is damaged, like in Air Force One with Harrison Ford.
The acting was great.
The soundtrack was good.
The visual effects were great.
The movie received positive reviews, and was a box office success, being the highest grossing movie of 2016 in Russia!
The movie received 11 Golden Eagle Awards ( the Russian Oscars) nominations including for Best Actor for Danila Kozlovsky, Best Movie, and Best Director.
You can watch the full movie for free on YouTube, with auto-generated translations but they are pretty bad :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxHHUBZAuA
Rating : Could have been a contender !