As a thriller Boîte Noire looks ok. Barely. Obviously a thriller implies you'll have some tough opposition so people don't expect a simple dramatization around the analysis of some imaginary CVR. What is ok here is we have a fine main character who is perfectly played by Pierre Niney. Quite frankly this is the only reason you would want to sit through these 2-hours.
Now, if you are not too tired and have a level of expectations that is slightly above FL010 (French Leniency) then you can feel all along that it simply doesn't add up. I am not talking about "icebox logic" but really about plot points that actually feel wrong in real time, as the movie tries to stay level with self-inflicted turbulence (plot twists).
Simply put, the BEA (~French NTSB) would definitely not have participated in a movie with a credible storyline incriminating its personnel. So who's corrupt here? The film-makers who accommodated some far-fetching conspiracy theory to scramble a script. I am not going to list all the inconsistencies since most would spoil the story but basically it is about the characters. A minor incident may credibly involve a couple of analysts at some point but a major crash? Deus ex machina, genius in a box... these are all variations of narrative devices that are disrespectful of the public.
Now the BEA, the NTSB etc. Are clearly not 100% independant. Building a story accounting for political or diplomatical pressure, focusing on the choice of what to include or not in a report, when to stop tracking the causes in an aviation company corporate culture... That would be a difficult thriller to write and even more difficult to shoot. Maybe it would be boring, obscure, but it would not be a stupid movie floated around a conspiracy theory that will feed into the fantasies of all the amateurs of simplistic drivel.
Now, if you are not too tired and have a level of expectations that is slightly above FL010 (French Leniency) then you can feel all along that it simply doesn't add up. I am not talking about "icebox logic" but really about plot points that actually feel wrong in real time, as the movie tries to stay level with self-inflicted turbulence (plot twists).
Simply put, the BEA (~French NTSB) would definitely not have participated in a movie with a credible storyline incriminating its personnel. So who's corrupt here? The film-makers who accommodated some far-fetching conspiracy theory to scramble a script. I am not going to list all the inconsistencies since most would spoil the story but basically it is about the characters. A minor incident may credibly involve a couple of analysts at some point but a major crash? Deus ex machina, genius in a box... these are all variations of narrative devices that are disrespectful of the public.
Now the BEA, the NTSB etc. Are clearly not 100% independant. Building a story accounting for political or diplomatical pressure, focusing on the choice of what to include or not in a report, when to stop tracking the causes in an aviation company corporate culture... That would be a difficult thriller to write and even more difficult to shoot. Maybe it would be boring, obscure, but it would not be a stupid movie floated around a conspiracy theory that will feed into the fantasies of all the amateurs of simplistic drivel.