Doug White (Dennis Quaid) is a person whose happiness has grown from deep roots. He possesses a steady Christian faith. He has a warm and loving partnership with his wife, Terri (Heather Graham), and together, they are the proud parents of two teenage daughters. But when Doug’s beloved brother suddenly dies, Doug’s faith in a higher power is shaken. And his spiritual crisis is amplified when Doug charters a small plane to return from his brother’s funeral.
The action-driven drama “On a Wing and a Prayer” is based on a true story of the ordeal that the White family faced when they entered the air in 2009. Their pilot suddenly died of a heart attack in the cockpit, leaving the severely inexperienced Doug to guide the plane to a safe landing. The movie follows Doug and his family as they work and pray to defy the odds stacked against their survival, with remote assistance from air traffic controllers and flight instructors.
The director Sean McNamara includes plenty of computer-generated action, with the plane darting through storm clouds, and narrowly swerving away from the ground. The images portray a weightless crisis, and the film’s emotional narrative feels similarly insincere, with the balance of fate seeming to sway on the placement of a well-timed prayer. Doug and his family call upon their faith as a kind of invisible parachute, a deus ex machina that can always save them from harm. It’s a cynical view of faith, one which removes the mystery and terror from life’s unforeseen calamities, and instead frames survival as a matter of calling into the correct belief system.
On a Wing and a Prayer
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video.
Teo Bugbee
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