The Captain

中国机长

China/Hong Kong, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 111 mins.

Director: Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau].

Rating: 8/10.

A crackerjack aeroplane thriller whose procedural approach and realistic look pay major dividends.

STORY

Chongqing airport, central China, 14 May 2018, 04:27. The nine-strong crew of Sichuan Airlines flight 3U8633 to Lhasa, Tibet province, assembles under veteran captain Liu Changjian (Zhang Hanyu), second captain Liang Dong (Du Jiang), first officer Xu Yichen (Ou Hao) and head stewardess Bi Nan (Yuan Quan). The taciturn Liu Changjian, who has promised his six-year-old daughter (Li Zilin) he’ll be back for her birthday party later that day, doesn’t approve of the cocky attitude of the young but talented Xu Yichen who starts chatting up stewardess Huang Jia (Zhang Tian’ai); Liang Dong, who is on board to captain the plane back to Chongqing, urges Liu Changjian to take it easy. Strong winds are forecast over the Tibetan Plateau, and 3U8633, scheduled to leave at 06:05, finally takes off at 06:25, with a full load of 119 passengers. The plane quickly encounters severe turbulence, so climbs to 9,800 metres to avoid it. However, a half-hour into the two-and-a-half-hour flight, a crack suddenly appears in the cockpit window; Liu Changjian decides to return and land at Chengdu airport, but suddenly the whole right window shatters and Xu Yichen is sucked halfway out of the plane. The main cabin is soon affected by the depressurisation and oxygen masks for the passengers are automatically released. The plane turns north into military-controlled airspace as it plummets by over 3,000 metres a minute. Liang Dong, who happens to be in the main cabin, struggles back into the cockpit and puts oxygen masks on himself, Liu Changjian and Xu Yichen. Chengdu airport prepares for an emergency landing. To conserve the plane’s dwindling oxygen supply, Liu Changjian needs to descend to at least 3,000 metres; but the Tibetan Plateau has an average height of 4,500 metres. When an aviation geek (Guan Xiaotong) happens upon developments, the news of 3U8633’s plight goes viral, and Liu Changjian’s wife (Chen Shu) is contacted by her brother. Liu Changjian stabilises the plane at 7,200 metres and 180 kilometres from Chengdu airport. But a huge storm front now blocks his path, and the passengers start to seriously panic.

REVIEW

After a wobbly past decade, veteran Hong Kong director/d.p. Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau] bounces back with The Captain 中国机长, a crackerjack thriller based on the true story of Sichuan Airlines flight 3U8633, whose windscreen shattered over the Tibetan Plateau during a short flight from Chongqing to Lhasa on 14 May 2018. Liu’s second Mainland blockbuster – following The Founding of an Army 建军大业 (2017) – it’s his strongest movie since the romance A Beautiful Life 不再让你孤单 (2011) and costume drama The Guillotines 血滴子 (2012). Trading on the cliches of the genre while also reinventing them, it’s also possibly the first procedural disaster movie, heightened by superb editing and much hand-held photography. Mainland box office has been hunky (RMB2.85 billion), just scraping into the highest-grossing Top Ten.

Mainland cinema already has a small body of aeroplane-themed thrillers – from the excellent Crash Landing 紧急迫降 (1999) and Red Snow 极地营救 (2002), both by Shanghai director Zhang Jianya 张建亚, to the cheesy Last Flight 绝命航班 (2014) and Lost in the Pacific 蒸发太平洋 (2016), both by Zhou Wenwubei 周文武贝 [Vincent Zhou] – but The Captain is easily the equal of the pioneering Crash Landing, its closest relative, and succinctly shows how far the Mainland industry has travelled in the past 20 years. Where Zhang’s film was the first of its kind for the Mainland, with an all-local cast and crew designed to showcase the revived Shanghai Film Studio and its VFX, it still remained partly tied to genre cliches, especially in the personal stories of the crew and passengers. The Captain still tips it hat to such staples, but in a very cursory way: individual passengers are rapidly drawn and not dwelt upon, and crew tensions are minimal and don’t get in the way of the main story.

Most of all, The Captain shows the influence of Liu’s background as a d.p., with a mobile camera bringing an almost documentary flavour to the film – both on the ground, with all the bureaucratic procedures, and in the air, as the 100-or-so passengers and crew of nine react to events. Liu has a far more sophisticated battery of VFX available to him than Zhang had two decades ago, but the film’s tension still comes more from its realistic photography by Hong Kong’s versatile Feng Yuanwen 冯远文 [Edmond Fung] and dense, complex editing by Zhong Weizhao 钟炜钊 [Azrael Chung] – both regular Liu collaborators – as from the CGI. Even the (routine) score by Hong Kong’s Chen Guangrong 陈光荣 [Comfort Chan] and Mainlander Chen Zhiyi 陈致逸 [Yu Peng 宇鹏] doesn’t make much impression above the splendidly detailed soundtrack, supervised by the US’ Victor Ray Ennis (The Last Stand, 2013).

Unlike the fictional Crash Landing, which revolved round an aeroplane whose landing gear malfunctions, The Captain deals with a recent real event (similar to that of British Airways flight 5390 in 1990) of which the audience already knows the ending. The film-makers’ solution is to focus on procedure, and hook the viewer on that. Apart from cosmetic changes to the names of the crew – captain Liu Chuanjian 刘传健 is renamed Liu Changjian 刘长健, and so on – and some obviously invented personal stories, the script by a certain Yu Yonggan 于勇敢 (who co-wrote recent firefighting blockbuster The Bravest 烈火英雄, 2019, produced by Liu) makes no bones about being a faithful portrayal of the true story, with a digital clock popping up at regular intervals, acres of captions identifying the air industry’s bureaucracy, immensely detailed portrayal of pre-flight activities (most of which dominate the opening 20 minutes), and writing that’s as lean as that of The Bravest.

However, unlike The Bravest, The Captain manages to make a virtue of this approach: the message is that, though for the passengers the crisis is something they’ll never forget, for the crew it’s all in a day’s work. As the plane prepares for its landing, Liu brings back the procedure-heavy approach of the opening, as well as – boldly – not ending the movie triumphantly once the landing is over. Instead, The Captain continues for a further 15 minutes, in a gradual dying fall back to normality, as the aviation business goes on, the crew tidies up, and so on. A brief coda, showing characters one year later, is unnecessary; but it doesn’t invalidate the film’s fresh approach.

Occasional slips could be rectified – brief moments of soppiness and over-emotional playing by the passengers – but are negligible overall. Though the film itself is the star, Liu has assembled a generally strong cast to service it. Iron-jawed veteran Zhang Hanyu 张涵予, 54, holds the whole thing together with a quietly dignified performance as the unflappable, taciturn title character, a former military pilot who’s flown the route over 100 times and just wants to do his job and get the passengers safely home. Zhang unbends the character in the final furlong but gets few big speeches; the acting honours here go to actress Yuan Quan 袁泉, 42, too rarely seen in main roles nowadays, as the head stewardess who holds her staff as well as the passengers together (with a fine speech at a climactic point) despite personal problems briefly hinted at in the film’s opening.

Though utterly convincing in the practical side of their roles, the other stewardesses are hard to tell apart as characters; more defined are the others up front in the cockpit – actor-singer Ou Hao 欧豪 as the cocky young first officer/co-pilot who shuts up after almost being sucked out of the plane, and flashing-eye Du Jiang 杜江, less wooden than usual, as the likeable second captain who helps save the day. (Both actors were also in the The Bravest.) Various names pop up for cameos (e.g. Yang Ying 杨颖 [Angelababy] as the second captain’s wife), but the film is mainly carried by Zhang, Yuan, Ou and Du. In line with the procedural approach, there’s no one character on the ground who establishes a guiding relationship with the crew, as is usual for the genre. Among those on terra firma, TV actress Chen Shu 陈数, 42, though basically in an extended cameo, is especially classy as the captain’s calm wife.

Visual effects, especially high above the snowy Tibetan Plateau, are fine and, while always looking like visual effects, don’t get in the way of the drama – the big setpiece of flying through a “hole” in a massive storm front is a humdinger, and the final approach and landing is a real nailbiter, despite the audience knowing the outcome. The film’s Chinese title means “The Chinese Captain”; for a while the English title was “The Chinese Pilot”. For the record, the reason for the windscreen shattering inflight has still to be explained.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Bona Film Group (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Huaxia Film Distribution (CN). Produced by Zhejiang Bona Production (CN), Bona Entertainment (HK).

Script: Yu Yonggan. Photography: Feng Yuanwen [Edmond Fung]. Editing: Zhong Weizhao [Azrael Chung]. Music: Chen Guangrong [Comfort Chan], Chen Zhiyi [Yu Peng]. Art direction: Zhuo Wenyao [Andrew Cheuk]. Costume design: Li Bijun [Lee Pik-kwan]. Sound: Victor Ray Ennis. Action: Li Dachao. Visual effects: Pan Guoyu, Joe Ceballos, Brian Meanley (Whiskytree). Technical supervision: Wang Baobo. Flight advice: Zeng Baochun.

Cast: Zhang Hanyu (Liu Changjian, captain), Ou Hao (Xu Yichen, first officer), Du Jiang (Liang Dong, second captain), Yuan Quan (Bi Nan, head stewardess), Zhang Tian’ai (Huang Jia, stewardess), Li Qin (Zhou Yawen, stewardess), Zhang Yamei (Zhang Qiuyue, stewardess), Yang Qiru (Yang Hui, stewardess), Gao Ge (Wu Yan, security officer), Huang Zhizhong (Wang Mo, Southwest Air Traffic controller), Zhu Yawen (Sichuan Regulatory Authority manager), Li Xian (Southwest Air Traffic Control Centre controller), Yang Ying [Angelababy] (Sichuan Airlines stewardess, Liang Dong’s wife), Chen Shu (Zou Han, Liu Changjian’s wife), Jiao Junyan (Civil Aviation Meteorological Centre supervisor), Wu Yue (Chengdu Airport Emergency Command Centre deputy director), Kan Qingzi (Terminal Control Room controller), Yu Ailei (Xin Xin, Western Theatre Command Airforce Traffic controller), Xiao’ai (Southwest Air Traffic meteorologist), Li Mincheng (male instructor), Feng Wenjuan (female instructor), Guan Xiaotong (female aviation geek), Zhang Xiaoqian (male aviation geek), Zhou Bo (Southwest Air Traffic manager), Yu Jieping (Southwest Air Traffic Control Centre controller), Yu Peishan (Airforce Airspace controller), Li Zilin (Liu Man’er, Liu Changjian’s daughter), Zhang Lei (male passenger), Lv Yongzhuo (male passenger next to deaf girl), Meng Ziyi (business-class female passenger), Liu Weiqiang [Andrew Lau] (Tibet Airlines captain).

Release: China, 30 Sep 2019; Hong Kong, 17 Oct 2019.