Sundance 2022: Downfall: The Case Against Boeing Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

It’s difficult to truly analyze a documentary with a subject such as Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. While it is a very nondescript and straightforward delivery of the timeline of events surrounding a prominent airplane manufacturer coming under fire after two fatal crashes a month apart, there is still a very humanistic and emotional quality that is baked within its story that only feels as if its meant to be the attractive exterior. Furthermore, the stories of the families affected by the loss of loved ones serve as bookends to a deluge of information that hinders the full weight of the emotional impact the documentary strives to achieve. And still, the entire story is compelling from start to finish.

Through its storytelling, many talking heads are interviewed from various facets of the events in question, shown to be the result of years of neglectful business practices that shy away from safety concerns and instead lean on the concealment of harmful facts. This is compounded by a focus on the value of rising stock prices over human lives culminating in the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 Max airplanes and the deaths of hundreds. And yet, in typical corporate fashion, the impending result is highly predictable and frustrating which seems to be the exact point.

In many ways, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing offers a cautionary tale of hubris, greed, and a lack of remorse that feels tone-deaf in its decision to spend more time navigating the history of Boeing with the victim’s families becoming secondary. Their stories help humanize a very glaring error from a corporation that has only experienced a slap on the wrist and instead of being placed at the center of this narrative, it merely surrounds it.

Despite some minor stumbles in its narrative decision-making, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing still focuses on a story that is essential viewing. Throughout its running time there is a permeating sense of dread that history is doomed to repeat itself and the ones left in the aftermath will only be able to say, “I told you so.”

*still courtesy of Sundance

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