The Captain [Zhong guo ji zhang] *** (2019, Hanyu Zhang, Hao Ou, Jiang Du) – Movie Review

Director Andrew Lau’s excellent, well-staged 2019 Chinese blockbuster real-life disaster movie The Captain [Zhong guo ji zhang] is based on a terrifying incident in May 2018 when a Sichuan Airlines flight cockpit’s windshield cracked and then shattered while the plane was flying 30,000 feet above the mountainous Tibetan Plateau.

Hanyu Zhang stars as The Captain, who keeps his nerve and his cool as his young co-pilot (Hao Ou) is sucked halfway out of the cockpit, while the second officer (Jiang Du) is in the main body of the plane with the 219 passengers, who start losing consciousness and their senses.

Lau’s impressive film looks pretty good and realistic, apart from a few too obvious process shots and some pointless trick shots that look like the bad old days of Seventies disaster movies. The story is a good one, and the movie is tense and gripping, and finally moving, though it is slightly marred at the end by sentimentality and a patriotic propaganda agenda, both of them relatively brief and entirely understandable. The film speaks for itself, and neither is necessary, slightly undermining the film’s power. The messages are solidarity and duty. If we stick together and do our work properly, all will be well.

The performances are solid, characterful and involving, with Hanyu Zhang a stern and sterling and stoical hero.

It is notable and interesting that the three pilots are all men, and that the six cabin staff are all female. And that all are played by handsome looking actors.

The Captain was released on 30 September 2019 in China and after two weeks in October 2019, it flew to an amazing $340 million at the China box office. It was released in the UK on 4 October 2019.

It is interesting to compare with the similar American story in Sully.

Andrew Lau is Weiqiang Liu.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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