DVD The Pilot's Wife

Attempting to gain insight into the crash, the pilot's union sends a representative to interview Kristine Lyons who ends up having many questions of her own. Upon learning that information on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (Black Box) may possibly implicate her husband in the cause of the downed aircraft, Kristine Lyons resorts to finding the truth on her own which eventually leads her to England.

Upon reaching London and uncovering a trail of lies, deceit, a double life, and illegal activities spanning two continents, Kristine Lyons soon finds out much more than she ever expected to and realizes she never really knew her husband at all.

The Pilot's Wife is a movie that wants to be great but seems to settle in at above average. The plot itself contains enough intrigue and mystery to carry two-thirds of it's length but the finale borders on being anti-climactic. As far as the acting is concerned, Christine Lahti and John Heard are the only prominent names in the cast. John Heard doesn't appear in enough scenes to carry any weight which leaves Christine Lahti to make up the difference. She does very well in her role, in my opinion, and her performances are one of the finer points of the movie. My final grade for The Pilot's Wife rates a B-.

Christine Lahti who had her Oscar nomination for "Swing Shift" with Goldie Hawn does an incredibly excellent performance here. The variety of levels she hits as grieving wife, compassionate mother, angry widow and driven super-sleuth give us a sterling performance. Campbell Scott, real-life son of George C. Scott & Colleen Dewhurst, gives an excellent subtle performance as the pilot association representative who becomes emotionally involved. John Heard played a character named Jack who was about as devious as Jack Lyons in "Pilot's Wife" in his co-starring role with Goldie Hawn in "Deceived." While his performance here is in flashback and not as chilling, it equals the devious nature of his previous Jack from 1991. Particularly excellent is newcomer Kirsty Mitchell as Murie Boland, the Irish counterpart of Lyons' hidden life. Mitchell gives a brief but excellent portrayal of a woman whose life has been impacted by the violent struggles in Ireland. I haven't seen her previous film credit of "Capone's Boys," but certainly intend to seek it out on the basis of the strength of this performance. Alison Pill from "Pieces of April" with Katie Holmes who plays daughter Mattie turns in a good performance as a teen dealing as much with the struggles of her own adolescent social issues as with her father's untimely death.

The depth for this picture comes amid the backdrop of the Irish troubles. How the lives of the characters weave with the political turmoil of Ireland along with Lahti's performance elevates the picture from the mundane to the magical. The DVD doesn't offer a great deal of extras; but it is nice to appreciate the film as an uninterrupted whole. Enjoy!

As the movie opens, Kathryn Lyons (Christene Lahti) is awakened in the wee small hours by a pounding on the front door. Robert Hart (Campbell Scott), a representative of the airline pilots' union, is there to tell her that husband Jack (John Heard) was killed when the commercial 747 he captained blew up with 100+ passengers off the Irish coast on a flight from London to Boston. Within a couple days, a contingent of interrogators from the National Transportation Safety Board shows up with the FBI and lawyers in tow to ask pointed questions. This is just about the time that the news media begins reporting that the flight's pilot may have been responsible. It's only when Kathryn learns that her husband's mother, whom Jack said had died when he was nine, is now residing in a rest home in Minnesota, and that Jack didn't live in the crews' quarters whenever on a London layover, that she suspects he was hiding a few teensy details of his life. A scrap of paper in his trousers and an email address on his computer lead her to London, where she discovers that Hubby, presumably in response to a mid-life crisis, left behind a Big Irish Surprise. Several, actually.

It's not that THE PILOT'S WIFE is a bad film, it's just not a particularly good one. Lahti is a fine actress, who delivers a respectable performance, especially when she admits to herself and Hart that her marriage was, in fact, wretched. But what could have been an above-average suspense thriller falls victim to uninspired screenwriting that yields a storyline that proceeds at a sedate pace without any real surprises or substantive drama. There are the nondescript performances by Scott and Alison Pill, who plays Mattie, the Lyons teenage daughter. Alison, ostensibly the apple of her Dad's eye, seems less disturbed about his death than Mom's less than undivided attention when she (Alison) reveals that she "did it" for the first time three years before when she was fourteen. The scripting renders the Alison persona unnecessary to the plot, and the final heart-to-heart between Kathryn and her daughter seemed particularly lame, i.e. perfectly suited to the small screen on a Sunday evening in American suburbia.

I watched THE PILOT'S WIFE while ironing. The latter was almost more interesting.