Benicio Del Toro, Isabella Rossellini, Jeff Bridges

A man's personality is dramatically changed after surviving a major airline crash.

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76% liked it

8,786 ratings

Critics

85% liked it

26 critics

R, 2 hrs. 2 min.

Directed by: Peter Weir

Release Date: January 1, 1993

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DVD Release Date: May 18, 1999

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Flixster Reviews (510)


  • September 15, 2008
    A man survives a plane crash and has problems coping with every day life and his family afterwards, thinking he is indestructible. Outstanding acting performances, a moving and touching yet unsentimental plot; plus two of the most staggering scenes ever: the way Bridges is trying...( read more) to convince fellow survivor Perez that it wasn't her fault that her baby got killed and the amazing last minutes with the flashback to the most disturbing plane crash scene ever. A shame so few people know of this masterpiece.
  • March 3, 2008
    This was a weird little movie - I remember the scene where they buy christmas presents for their dead loved ones...it was pretty original
  • November 21, 2007
    Just as God seems to be playing with Jeff Bridges, Fearless plays with its viewers in just about every conceivable way. You can learn to love characters who you hated just five minutes before. You can take their completely irrational decisions, turn them over in your head and rea...( read more)lize that maybe they were thinking about it more than you were aware. You can see people do stupid things that completely touch you. Just as Jeff Bridges's life gets flipped around, so too will your perceptions.

    Fearless is a really great movie because of that; because it can jerk you around and not make you feel at all cheated. Compared to The Game, which I watched yesterday and which left me feeling completely robbed, this movie is so rational and realistic in its madness; it is totally believable. It's not a question of whether the writing, the acting or the cinematography contribute to this...because it's simply all three. Fearless is almost perfectly harmonized. Though it is fatally underappreciated and unheard of, it doesn't make it any less great. This is a look at human emotion on a completely different, unique level. Peter Weir outdid himself with this one.
  • August 15, 2007
    One of the most interestingly eye-opening films of the 90s. With director Peter Weir, I always know I am in for a different kind of film; one that has more poignant issues and other existential themes incorporated into it. With Fearless, Weir shows us the upsides and downs...( read more)ides of what it's like to survive a traumatic event like an airplane crash.

    Based slightly on the airline crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in 1989, this film is very detailed in the crash itself and has many sad scenes that can compare in sadness to those of United 93. Max Klein (Bridges) is a survivor of an airplane crash. Many die, including his business partner, and the trauma transforms his life. He enters an altered state of consciousness; soon after the crash he even thinks he is dead, and begins rethinking life, death, God, and the afterlife. Existential questions start to preoccupy his life. He moves away from his wife (Rossellini) and son but, encouraged by an aircraft company psychiatrist (Turturro), he tries to break the depression and apathy of another survivor, Carla Rodrigo (Perez), who lost her baby son during the flight. Eventually Max's increasingly dramatic attempts at pushing the boundaries between life and death succeed in jolting Carla from her uncertain state.

    Amazing performances highlight this film. Rossellini and Turturro are good, but it's Rosie Perez that steals the show. She received an Academy Award nomination for her role in this film, but lost to Anna Paquin. Her role as a grieving mother may be one we normally see in films, but the way she portrayed her character was something I will never forget. Her spirited performance made the character very memorable.

    The anchor of this film, however, was Jeff Bridges. He is an underrated actor and is overlooked by the Academy on many occasions. His performances in The Fisher King and this film are some of the best examples of well written and well acted intimate portraits on film. The chemistry between Bridges and Perez is also something truly remarkable. The scene where Perez has to say goodbye to Bridges so he can get on with his life and get back to his family is one of the saddest goodbyes I have ever seen.

    The cast was great, but I do believe that Tom Hulce's character was quite annoying and totally unnecessary in most scenes he was in. Maybe if they had recast that character it would have been different because Tom Hulce slowly got on my nerves.

    Overall, this film is very satisfying. It's inspiring, really. It'll make you happy and sad and it will make you realize that you have to live your life to the fullest. This film is unfortunately underrated mainly due to the impossible to find DVD, but if you do find it, I suggest that you see it because it's a great movie that should be seen. One of the best of 1993.
  • August 11, 2007
    Jeff Bridges survives an ugly plane crash at the beginning of this movie, which leads him becoming fearless. A few things are learned along the way, but I couldn't get into it much.
  • October 23, 2009
    Bought this from the DVD bin at Wal Mart & it was worth every penny
  • October 2, 2009
    Though well-received by critics, this tale of a man who walks away from a plane crash with an entirely new outlook on life failed to do well at the box office. A mesmerizing film filled with haunting scenes and a finale that can tear you to pieces. This movie just keeps getting ...( read more)better with each viewing.
  • September 27, 2009
    This film had a lot of potential to be awesome but quite a few of the scenes seemed to drag. Still Jeff Bridges was cool although I would have liked to see more focus on his character rather than Rosie Perez.
  • September 18, 2009
    Emotionally intense psychological study on how humans react after a tragedy and how it affects the people around them.

    67/100
  • September 3, 2009
    This movie was the bomb. Jet Li is my favorite martial arts actor.

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