When their rickety plane is blown off course and crashes in the middle of the Gobi desert and with no hope of rescue, a disparate group of people must band together to build a new one. Can they put aside their petty differences and work as a team? And more importantly, can they really make a new aeroplane out of the old one and get it off the ground.

The script by Scott Frank and sometime actor/writer/director Ed Burns is relatively sparse and compact. There are lots of characters and as a result, little cumulative screen time is given to each one. They are stock characters; the bureaucrat, the roughneck pilot, the hard man, the feisty woman, the mad scientist and so on and so forth. And each has his own particular skill that enables them to contribute to the group's survival and with a name like "Flight of the Phoenix", the ending is never in doubt. But as someone once said, it is the journey, not the arrival that counts and there are plenty of diverting mini-adventures to entertain. There is a sense of invention about the deaths that inevitably form a part of the film, whether people are falling out of the plane as it breaks apart, being flayed alive by sand or experiencing real bullet-time. There are some nice sequences that build affection for the characters, like the Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton take-off commentary by Frank and co-pilot AJ, or when Frank reluctantly gives in to the "hopes and dreams" speech. Some of the inevitable conflict that follows is a little over-ripe, but isn't bad enough to drag the film down. And the writers keep the mysterious Elliott's origins a secret until the very last moment.

Giovanni Ribisi gives yet another fantastic performance as a sinister outsider. The character of plane designer Elliot looks as out of place as he is. Fashioned after the Aryan ideal, he is all bleached blonde hair and owlish glasses with immaculately turned-out clothes. He is a strange and possibly dangerous man, whose nebbish precision is symptomatic of closet megalomania. Ribisi is at his best in the scenes when he turns on the other members of the group, insisting they finish his plane, no matter what the cost to human life. He reveals himself as an amoral, unstable egotist and by refusing to help the others complete the aeroplane it is touch-and-go whether they will get out alive.

The special effects are of the Peter Jackson mix and match variety, using whatever technologies are at hand to get the desired effect. So although the effects team built a full-size version of the Phoenix, the flying version is actually a model, but it's such a good replica that you can't see the joins. Even when the effects are obviously computer generated, like when parts start to shear off the plane, it is done consistently and with such good editing that it is never less than seat-gripping. Similarly the time-lapse cinematography by Donal Caulfield is of astonishingly high quality and adds a lot of atmosphere to the film. It's also an unusual use of a technique more often confined to nature documentaries and high-end television dramas. Where the effects fall down is where they are conspicuous by their absence. Despite being trapped in the burning heat of the Gobi with little food and even less water, none of the cast members seems to suffer from loss of muscle mass, sunburn, exposure or sand blindness. Some of them look a little pink, but the majority start and end the movie looking exactly the same. And how does Elliot keep his roots so blonde?