Charlie Victor Romeo

A theater piece shot in 3D with a minimal set, a simple idea, yet yielding high drama and action simply from the transcripts of these aviation disasters.

This is a play where it is all about the words and the fact that those words are what really happened. Highly riveting and the blackouts are used to great effect. Here the adrenaline is genuine, not some CGI roller-coaster and it is made more compelling because if you have ever been a passenger on a airplane, it takes you where you probably wouldn't choose to go.

If you are going on a flight somewhere you probably wouldn't want to watch this movie. I am certain that this will never be an in-flight movie. You may want to consider the train or a bus after watching this.

Not a popcorn, action adventure, or any other kid of movie genre that is commercial - this is theater and an art film, not typical product.

The 3D is simple, effective and done as if that is just the way to shoot films, without the usual gimmicks and in your face rudeness of many 3D movies.

Stereoscopic production to document live theater is one of the many niche areas for which it's perfectly suited. In Charlie Victor Romeo the 3D is so efficiently used that you'll forget it's a film. It does what 3D does best. Immerse. By using Cockpit Voice Recorder transcripts it takes you into that little room past 1st class where complete boredom suddenly turns into nail biting drama. And special effects you generate in the theater of the mind are more terrifying than any CGI. I think you'll agree it could never reach such an emotional high point without 3D. No slow-mo 3D, dragons or aliens. But real super heroes in action. For some, their last actions. In 3D, you're in that Cockpit with the crew. So part of you is a passenger, part NTSB investigator. The emotional draw is intense. You feel attached to the Crew so when the scene ends and their fate is revealed, you're touched. The slight release of tension comes when the actors reappear in other scenes and you say to yourself, "That's right, it's only a film." These folks nailed it so well that CVR is being used for Pilot training.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I'm surprised the film was ever made, as I imagine the audience would be limited. But, I'm glad it was. It reveals the intensity of sudden emergencies and the chaos they create.

Many of these emergencies were completely out of the control of the pilots. They did nothing to contribute to the problems. As passengers, we wonder how they are working in the cockpit. We could not imagine the drama that unfolds when three highly trained specialists are handed situations that no one anticipated or planned for.

Like a ballet, it looks easy, but it isn't. All the actions are intuitive, because you have to act without thinking...you actions are all hardwired into your brain through training. I think the film portrays accurately the heroism of our airline pilots.

I am a former flight instructor, but I have never seen any similar film that is actually acted out according to the recorded speech and on the same cadence as the pilots experienced in flight.

You can see how the airlines of foreign carriers have no chance of survival in cases where they have to fly by the seat of their pants. They aren't trained to react in situations that aren't spelled out in the flight manuals or handled by computers. Plus, they have cultural communications issues that impede direct intervention in emergencies, which can unfold in seconds.

I urge anyone flying on Asian carriers (plus other countries, I'm sure) to never get on a plane that is flying into bad weather, because the pilots' options are limited by their lack of hands-on training.

It is one thing to read aviation accident reports (and I do) even to the transcripts. It is another to listen to them, and in 1999 someone made a purportedly-awesome stage play where actors read, in a mockup cockpit, with annunciators and stuff, actual CVR transcripts (almost word for word, almost in real time).

I had heard great things about it for CRM (crew resource management) training, and there was a low quality video that was distributed for only that purpose (which I never saw). But it turns out in 2013 they secretly made this and it. Is. Awesome. I know some of these accidents well and it adds an entirely other dimension to them. I stopped during the Aeroperu static tube crash to quote the line in the title to some people I know because as much as reading the report makes you go "wow, that must have sucked" this makes it really personal.

Sometimes uncomfortably so. I mean, it's super not for nervous fliers, and if you are flight crew be careful when you watch it, as you may not sleep. It is very, very well done I think. I also totally agree that it provides a nice launching off point for discussions of CRM, team dynamics, sterile cockpit rules, general crisis management, etc. so may have training value for you, and your coworkers.

All in all, one of the best things I have seen on film in years.

Wow, this is so stupid where do I begin. It's NOT a documentary. It's a couple guys sitting behind a table acting out a skit of a couple pilots flying a plane talking about nothing interesting. I love Air Crash Investigations and Mayday. This is NOTHING like those shows. This is like a really boring low budget play.