On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.
I wouldn't have expected a serious drama about airline safety regulations to join the ranks of
movies that get retitled for home video release with the number 13 in order to make them sound more ominous, but that's exactly what happened to the British social-issue drama
A Dark Reflection, released on VOD in the U.S. as
Flight 313: The Conspiracy. Really, both of the movie's titles promise more intrigue than is actually on display in what is essentially a dramatized position paper about the phenomenon known as "aerotoxic syndrome."
That's the idea, still mostly unsubstantiated, that the air in commercial airliner cabins is contaminated by chemicals from jet engines, causing illness in both passengers and crew members.
Flight 313 director, co-writer, producer and editor Tristan Loraine is a former British Airways pilot, and the movie was financed entirely by airline crew unions and other advocacy groups. So it's mostly concerned with sending a message, which makes the narrative and character development secondary to the political and social cause. That's fine for a documentary, but it means that
Flight 313 is clumsy, ineffective drama that frequently pauses to deliver dry statistics and explanations of the mechanics of jet engines.
Loraine clearly wants to emulate crusading-journalist dramas like
The Insider,
The China Syndrome and
All the President's Men (even explicitly referencing Woodward and Bernstein at one point), but there's very little suspense in the story of newspaper reporter Helen Eastman (Georgina Sutcliffe) and her efforts to expose a cover-up of toxic cabin air at fictional airline JaspAir. Helen and her colleague Natasha Stevens (Rita Ramnani) very slowly connect the dots from the "near-miss" landing of the titular flight to JaspAir's policy of ignoring and hiding evidence of contamination in its cabins.
The drama here is mostly inert, though, and the characters are one-dimensional ciphers representing various points of view on the issue, even as Loraine attempts to flesh out a bit of Helen's back story (via an opening sequence set in the Middle East, where she witnesses a co-worker get killed). None of the flimsy character beats are relevant to the story, and the dialogue is always clunky and awkward, whether it's expressing outrage over toxic air or attempting to convey personal feelings. Plus, half the time it's muddled and difficult to make out. From a technical standpoint,
Flight 313 comes across as a movie made by someone with more passion than skill, and while it's hard to fault Loraine for wanting to call attention to what he believes is an important issue, framing that issue as a dull movie-of-the-week-style drama isn't going to win him very many supporters.
That's the idea, still mostly unsubstantiated, that the air in commercial airliner cabins is contaminated by chemicals from jet engines, causing illness in both passengers and crew members. Flight 313 director, co-writer, producer and editor Tristan Loraine is a former British Airways pilot, and the movie was financed entirely by airline crew unions and other advocacy groups. So it's mostly concerned with sending a message, which makes the narrative and character development secondary to the political and social cause. That's fine for a documentary, but it means that Flight 313 is clumsy, ineffective drama that frequently pauses to deliver dry statistics and explanations of the mechanics of jet engines.
Loraine clearly wants to emulate crusading-journalist dramas like The Insider, The China Syndrome and All the President's Men (even explicitly referencing Woodward and Bernstein at one point), but there's very little suspense in the story of newspaper reporter Helen Eastman (Georgina Sutcliffe) and her efforts to expose a cover-up of toxic cabin air at fictional airline JaspAir. Helen and her colleague Natasha Stevens (Rita Ramnani) very slowly connect the dots from the "near-miss" landing of the titular flight to JaspAir's policy of ignoring and hiding evidence of contamination in its cabins.
The drama here is mostly inert, though, and the characters are one-dimensional ciphers representing various points of view on the issue, even as Loraine attempts to flesh out a bit of Helen's back story (via an opening sequence set in the Middle East, where she witnesses a co-worker get killed). None of the flimsy character beats are relevant to the story, and the dialogue is always clunky and awkward, whether it's expressing outrage over toxic air or attempting to convey personal feelings. Plus, half the time it's muddled and difficult to make out. From a technical standpoint, Flight 313 comes across as a movie made by someone with more passion than skill, and while it's hard to fault Loraine for wanting to call attention to what he believes is an important issue, framing that issue as a dull movie-of-the-week-style drama isn't going to win him very many supporters.
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