This documentary on Netflix leaves the impression that the 737 Max’s entire existence is rotten.
Regardless of any changes that Boeing made to the 737 Max, regardless of the clearance the revised plane received from the Federal Aviation Administration in late 2020, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” leaves the impression that its entire existence is a mistake: that it was cobbled together for the wrong reasons, to boost short-term stock gains and to avoid the time and costs of engineering a new, non-737 plane.
The problems of the Max, and how its flawed design was implicated in the crashes of flights on Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, killing hundreds, have been well-aired, and this documentary, directed by Rory Kennedy (“Last Days in Vietnam”), does not break news or break ground cinematically. (We don’t need to see filler footage of a reporter making calls.) But it is likely to leave viewers shaken, and it is always comprehensible, even in sequences that illustrate what the pilots saw in the cockpit. As the movie explains, in the first crash they were put in the position of having seconds to beat back a system that Boeing had never told pilots was on the aircraft.
“Downfall” features interviewees who have gotten lost or abstracted in all the coverage, including the wife of the Lion Air captain, family members of the passenger victims and former Boeing employees. “How many times have you heard companies say, ‘We’re committed to excellence, we’re committed to safety, we’re committed to our customers’?” asks Andy Pasztor, who reported on the story for The Wall Street Journal, in summation. His verdict: “We should be skeptical.”
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing
Rated PG-13. Upsetting material involving the crashes. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
