AllMovie

Filmmakers Robert Berger and Karlyn Michelson offer a tense, singular look at people faced with extreme crises in this drama. Berger is the founder of the New York theater company Collective: Unconscious, and in 1999, with Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory, he wrote and directed a play called Charlie Victor Romeo, in which a handful of actors reenact scenes taken from the transcripts of "black box" recordings that preserve critical moments during disasters aboard commercial airline flights. The film adaptation of Charlie Victor Romeo deliberately emphasizes the project's origins on the stage (with 3D camerawork capturing the depth and dimensions of the performance space), but by allowing the audience to more closely study the actors as they portray real-life figures facing almost certain death while struggling not to alarm their passengers, they've added to the intimacy of an unusual study of people struggling to make sense of a potential catastrophe. Featuring a cast of six actors (Patrick Daniels, Noel Dinneen, Irving Gregory, Debbie Troche, Nora Woolley, and Sam Zuckerman) swapping roles in five different vignettes, Charlie Victor Romeo received its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.