Fearless *** (1993, Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, Tom Hulce, Rosie Perez, Benicio Del Toro) – Classic Movie Review 11,342

‘Some people are afraid of nothing’: Jeff Bridges stars in the 1993 air crash survivor guilt film Fearless.

Director Peter Weir’s 1993 survivor guilt drama Fearless is based on the novel by Rafael Yglesias, who writes his own screenplay, and stars Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, John Turturro, Tom Hulce, Rosie Perez and Benicio Del Toro. Weir said making the film cured him of his fear of flying.

Fearless is a claustrophobic, asphyxiatingly intense, and impeccably done air crash angst drama, with Bridges at his most affecting as Max Klein, the survivor of a horrific plane disaster. He sees his business partner killed, and helps a boy to safety, but then just takes a taxi away from the carnage. He is discovered in a motel room by the FBI, restored to his puzzled wife Laura (Rossellini) and son Jonah (Spencer Vrooman), and then confronted by airline psychiatrist Dr Bill Perlman (Turturro).

But he is changed for ever: he resists the wishes of lawyer Brillstein (Hulce) to lie about the crash for a bigger insurance claim, and then sets about to help another crash survivor, Carla Rodrigo (Perez), whose baby was killed. Somewhere just before the crash Bridges has realised that this is his death and approaches it fearless, so now continues his life unafraid.

You can see how this would work on the pages of Rafael Yglesias’s novel, but director Weir is often up against it in trying to make a metaphysical story ‘real’ and ‘believable’ on screen. He has a vast armoury of ingenuity to help him, and produces a succession of moving scenes, but bit by bit their impact ebbs away, and they begin to alienate, and the piece’s initially sympathetic strangeness starts telling against it.

However, the film’s ambitions and sympathetic performances go some considerable way towards riveting the attention. The crash itself, when we finally see it in flashback, is brilliantly staged – and so this is never going to be an in-flight movie. Is this a subject we just don’t want to think about?

Perez was Oscar nominated as Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Also in the cast are Deidre O’Connell, John de Lancie, Daniel Cerny, Eve Roberts, Spencer Vrooman, Robin Pearson Rose, Debra Monk, Cynthia Mace, and Randle Mell.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,342

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