Talk about your pointless remakes. John Moore's new version of Robert Aldrich's 1965 The Flight of the Phoenix (without the first article, because apparently "the" isn't cool anymore) is nearly identical to its predecessor, only amped up about three notches for no reason other than to give viewers more explosions and gunplay.
Taking over from Jimmy Stewart, and doing a decent job of it, Dennis Quaid plays pilot Frank Towns, one of those gritty old-timers who doesn't take any guff from pesky things like sandstorms. Frank's non-guff-taking ways get him and his passengers into trouble when, flying over the Gobi Desert with a plane full of oil workers, he decides to head into a giant sandstorm, and predictably, the plane goes down. Stranded in the middle of the desert with a dwindling water supply, Frank, his co-pilot (Tyrese Gibson) and the men and lone woman on board have only one hope of escape: fussy, annoying engineer Elliott (played by the fussy and annoying Giovanni Ribisi), who has a plan to use scrap parts of their downed aircraft to build a new one.
Moore's film follows the original exactly, trimming a bit of running time but otherwise hitting all the same beats, and its cosmetic changes are almost entirely useless. We get gratuitous explosions and a gunfight with a roving band of marauders, a woman (Miranda Otto) added to the cast for sex appeal and showy, distracting camera work that only demonstrates Moore's advertising background. That experience serves him well in the chaotic opening crash sequence, greatly expanded from the original, but brings the film to a screeching halt when it's time for quiet character moments. Plus, he neglects to include the monkey from the original, and for that there is no excuse.
Quaid mostly delivers as the square-jawed hero, playing a similar part to his turn a few months ago in The Day After Tomorrow, but he's too easygoing to carry the film. Ribisi gives a one-note performance, playing Elliott with a nasal accent that quickly grates, and painting him as self-righteous and petty, rather than the distant but altruistic version in Aldrich's original. That original is superior in almost every way, and since Moore adds nothing of consequence and follows the plot down to the twist that shows up near the end, there's no reason at all to see his version instead. It's not a terrible movie, but it's a completely redundant one.