PG | 1 h 42 min | Drama | 2023
It’s Easter in 2009, and 56-year-old pharmacist Doug White (Dennis Quaid), wife Terri (Heather Graham), and their teenage daughters are returning in a small, private plane to their Louisiana home, after mourning the sudden death of Doug’s older brother Jeff in Florida.
Ten minutes in, their pilot dies of a heart attack—leaving flying-novice Doug at the controls with his family’s fate, literally, in his hands. Air Traffic Control’s (ATC) Dan Favio (Rocky Myers) rings ace-pilot Kari Sorenson (Jesse Metcalfe) in Connecticut to talk Doug through flying and landing maneuvers.
In entertainment value, Sean McNamara’s film isn’t meant to rival a mid-air hijack or heist thriller or to be an accurate biopic. Rather, it’s a moralistic family drama that uses Doug’s real-life story to explore loss, grief, faith in God, and prayer.
There’s no visible “hero.” Doug’s a bundle of nerves, whining about the complex console, aghast that each dial looks just like the other. There’s no “villain” either, except Doug’s own fury at God.
Critics reductively misread the film as trite, as if you lose faith following loss and rediscover faith following recompense. Faith isn’t a magical switch, handing life back to those who believe or snatching it from those who don’t. To Doug, faith isn’t his reward to God, it’s his reward to himself: in keeping faith not just amid loss but even amidst the continued threat of loss.
Seeing Terri consoling a grieving Doug, the audience is left wondering: Will she lose faith if Doug and her daughters are killed? Who knows. But she hints that her faith might eventually help her go beyond herself to reach out to others. Terri is saying that our lives aren’t ours; they’re gifts. Sure, we can rejoice in the fulfillment others bring us, but when they’re taken from us, that’s when we must humbly renew, not reject, faith.
Terri is undeterred by her children’s tantrums, reminding them of who they are to her and each other. When Doug is drowning in self-pity, Terri reminds him of who God is to them; faith, she seems to say, is the bridge that’ll get him from despair to hope.
Women here see their men appear helpless—Terri with her husband Doug, Ashley Harrison (Anna Enger Ritch) with her boyfriend Kari. Yet both ask: “How can I help?” They’re adding value, not blaming, or proving they’re better, or firing barbs that provoke already vulnerable men to lash out in bitterness or retaliation. They’re collaborators, not competitors. Together, they’re better than they might be on their own.
McNamara’s Messages
McNamara’s saying a lot. We trust, repeatedly: People marry, without knowing how they’ll turn out as husbands or as wives. Couples have children, not knowing if they’ll grow up respectful. Passengers board flights not knowing whether the pilots will land safely.Faith in God isn’t too different: It’s less an incident and more a journey, with every step a choice to weaken or strengthen faith. The preacher at Jeff’s funeral says, “Life and loss are intertwined, as are hurt and healing, one cannot exist without the other, and one makes the other stronger.”
Faith doesn’t mean we put up our feet and fly through life on “autopilot.” God wants us as partners, but he works through messy human beings: husbands willing themselves to do the impossible, or wives, or strangers portraying the hand of God by taking responsibility for their decisions to help the seemingly helpless.
McNamara’s point? We’re fragile and dependent on others. Prayer isn’t just the nice things we tell God. It includes our rage and our confusion, just as children tell parents both the good and the bad, in a context of trust. Except, faith is a higher order of trust, like flying blind with nothing but a crackling voice at the other end of a line to guide you.
Structured prayer helps; think of the ATC’s pilot-speak. But when Doug’s flailing in the cockpit, he tells his remote flying-guides to strip the jargon and to just talk.
We embody prayers in ourselves, sometimes crying for help, sometimes sighing with thanks.
