“Mayday”: Last flight for B series according to Jean-François Richet

Between catastrophe film and commando operation, this film around a pilot that makes an alliance with a convict to save its passengers follows an effective formula.

by Mathieu Macheret

Jean-François Richet, who had burst into French screens with suburbs (inventory, in 1995, Ma 6-T Va Crack-Eer, in 1997), alternates for some time productions in French and In English, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the ambition to synthesize an effective formula, close to a certain genre cinema. If Mayday is perhaps the one who approaches it the most, it is thanks to his welcome modesty (Richet was not always stored there, as evidenced by the recent Emperor of Paris, 2018), which consists in reactivating The cogs of a typical action program of the B series of the years 1980-1990, without trying to amplify it but by simply applying it to the letter.

Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler), old aviation briscard passed by the Royal Air Force, but converted into low cost flights, must ensure a last long-haul flight, between Singapore and California, before New Year Apart from a few ordinary passengers, he is forced to take a deemed dangerous prisoner on board on board (Mike Colter). Meeting a thunderstorm, the device takes a thunderbolt which undermines the electrical system, which forces the pilot to land urgently in the middle of nowhere. In fact, on an island lost in the Philippines, where an armed militia rages to the teeth. In order to save his passengers, the commander will be forced to make an alliance with the convict.

go to the end of the mission

The original title, plane (“plane”), clearly announces the sharpness and basic character of the program, where Richet and his writers, Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis, mix well -known elements of catastrophe film and commando operation . They mainly restore a physical action model that seemed to be swept away for a long time by a Hollywood having completed its transition to all-drug. Through his hero, Riche brushes the expected portrait of a professional whose obsession is to go to the end of his mission – to accomplish his program, in which we can see an obvious relay of the filmmaker himself .

But the guiding ethics Torrance goes a little further: “Everything in its time”, repeats the pilot as a currency, or Mantra. Richet takes morality on his own and seems to redo his ranges inside such an emaciated formula, which leaves no room for personal expression. One plan after the other, raise tension, reach your climax: elementary notions of staging that make the price of this object from hell from series B, as if it were today a lost paradise.

You have 4.17% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports cited above.