Meet China’s answer to Sully.
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. 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).
The movie is one of three feature films released in conjunction with China’s October 1 National Day observance. 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 Captain thus does have some rah-rah moments in tribute to the people who saved the day, going overboard in a few places. No regular adult human would intone “Respect life. Respect duty. Respect procedures.” to coworkers in the cafeteria, for example. The score also approaches sledgehammer levels of bombast on occasion.
The film’s screenplay (by Yu Yonggyan, The Bravest) follows a standard disaster-movie structure, introducing the main characters first. 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. These characters are about as fleshed-out as the descriptions indicate, with the exception of Yuan’s excellent, layered performance. 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.
But after this nothing-special beginning, the film, well, takes off. After the window shatters at 32,000 feet, the plane drops 8,000 feet before the experienced captain regains control. But that’s only the beginning. The captain must then steer the plane through severe storms, with little to no visibility, while maintaining a dangerously low altitude. Simultaneously, the plane’s oxygen supply is running low, and the passengers begin to pass out and panic. 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.
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. It’s truly impressive. And the aerial cinematography is brilliant. This is not a CGI-fest—you feel as though you’re one of the passengers, or looking in via the nonexistent cockpit windshield, as the situation spirals out of control.
The Captain is just the ticket for aviation fans. And I’m pleased to report that the daughter’s birthday party goes off without a hitch. Because of course it does.
—–
The Captain (Original title: “Zhong guo ji zhang”) Run time: 111 minutes
Director: Andrew Lau
Screenplay: Yu Yonggan
Featuring: Zhang Hanyu, Yuan Quan, Ou Hao, Du Jiang, Zhang Tianai, Shu Chen, Li Qin, Zhang Yamei, Yang Qiru, and Gao Ge
In Mandarin, Tibetan, and English with English subtitles
A Well Go USA release of a Bona Entertainment Co., Alibaba Pictures, Huaxia Film Distribution Co. production
Executive producer: Peggy Lee
Producers: Huang Xiang, Jiang Defu, Quji Xiaojiang, Xu Zhiyong, Dong Yu
[…] Hong Kong-based Andrew Lau’s (the Infernal Affairs trilogy) The Captain is a dramatization of the 2018 incident that occurred aboard Sichuan Airlines flight 8633, when the […]