At least PARALLAX VIEW or ALL PRESIDENTS MEN have certainly inspired this kind of atmosphere, so rare in the French film industry. Or THE CONVERSATION, directed by Francis Coppola. This is a tremendous film, as LE CHANT DU LOUP was too; daring, powerfully directed, accurate, very well documented, a story about suspicion, plot, paranoia, conspiracy, disturbing by the way, but riveting. Excellent ending.

Well this is a good fictional take on the dubious shadow sides of international aviation industry, the aircraft builders, their subcontractors vs. The safety agencies around the world whos certificates new aircrafts and due to all the money involved the same agencies may not be so safe due to corrupt elements within the ranks. This film do have a load of realism connected to actual scenarios over the years, and displays how voulnerable you and i may be due to a flip of a coin dropped in the inner pocket of sinister culprits and eager ceo's.

Its an intense aircraft accident investigation that goes deeper than normal, due to a nerdie, partly asperger autismic investigator that have a snout for sounds out of the normal spectre, he rings the alarm bell asap but has to ride the operation through the heavy waves of resistance from his superiors.

Its a technically advanced flick, but plotted and acted in a cool way, a film made in the best of european/french filmaking. So if you want excessive exitement for the evening, do watch black box. A big recommend from the grumpy old man.

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.