This just surprised me in my Netflix feed, and I decided to watch it. I will say that while the lack of having a publication to back me as a film critic certainly limits my exposure, one of the things it does for me is allow me to choose what I want to review and when I want to review it because I’m not working on assignment. I’m working on a wing and a prayer. So, much like pilots when they’re flying a Boeing airplane, they’re doing so on a wing and a prayer. It also tends to mean that I often skew Fresh because sometimes I look at a film and just think of all the other things I haven’t seen yet and realize immediately that it’s not worth my time. Somehow, with Free Fall: A Reckoning for Boeing, I managed to not comprehend, double-check, or do anything ahead of time to know that this was actually a follow-up to the 2022 documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.

Basically, this is like An Inconvenient Sequel, Food, Inc. 2, or Fahrenheit 11/9, that Michael Moore follow-up everybody forgot existed. Documentary sequels can be a bit of a mixed bag because oftentimes the first one is so targeted and so urgent that when the second one comes back around, it’s like, “Oh, by the way.” I would say Free Fall felt like that while I was watching it, and then afterward, when I learned that it was actually a follow-up to Downfall, it really validated that feeling for me. I was like, of course. That makes sense now. It all makes sense now. Not that Free Fall in and of itself isn’t a compelling documentary, but one of the things it doesn’t have is that other shoe to drop.

Some documentaries end up changing lives, hearts, and minds because the footage they uncover or the journalistic deep dive brings to light some truly amazing revelations. Obviously, this was true for HBO’s docuseries The Jinx, which ended in a truly shocking fashion. The same could be said of films like The Cove, which brought far more attention to the slaughter of dolphins, Blackfish, which brought attention to humans unnecessarily being in the water with killer whales, and Super Size Me, which helped trigger the beginning of the end of the Super Size option at McDonald’s. Sometimes when the sequel comes around, it feels like your neighbor coming back and knocking on your door, reminding you, “Hey, remember we had that conversation? You said you weren’t going to let your dog go to the bathroom in my yard anymore. Well, he still is.” Now you have an angry neighbor standing there staring at you because he feels like he wasn’t heard the first time.

Free Fall compiles a lot of information that has emerged since 2022 as the case against Boeing has continued to reverberate, with more people drawn into the legal consequences surrounding the airplane manufacturer. We see these stories unfold. We see whistleblowers coming forward. Tragically, we see what happens to one whistleblower who simply cannot reconcile being a part of tragedy anymore. But Free Fall lacks that knockout punch at the end. Instead, it seems to want to curve the blame toward our government and our Justice Department for allowing those at the top to avoid the kind of criminal accountability the documentary believes is warranted, while making everything better with a fine for a company that makes an absurd amount of money. Where’s the oversight? I guarantee right now, during this administration, there is no increased oversight.

I think part of why I was slightly disappointed is that as Boeing airplanes have had so many issues over the past couple of years, DEI and disabled people have repeatedly been dragged into conversations about aviation safety as convenient scapegoats. Meanwhile, the whistleblowers interviewed in this documentary aren’t describing an onslaught of disabled employees who suddenly became incapable of building airplanes. They’re describing what they believe is a systemic problem starting at the top and working its way down, involving cost-cutting, pressure, and attempts to move people out of the way when they complain that something isn’t safe or isn’t ready. The film never exclusively says that DEI is being used as a scapegoat here, and I wish it would. I’m tired of people thinking blind people are the reason planes are crashing.

We’ve even reached the point where blindness has been dragged into arguments about air traffic control and aviation accidents, which is incredibly asinine when there are strict medical and vision requirements for those jobs in the first place. It’s conversations like these, and the fact that nobody shuts them down forcefully enough, that allow basement trolls to turn DEI into some imaginary boogeyman while the actual allegations being made by Boeing whistleblowers are sitting right there. Free Fall had an opportunity to connect those dots and make a larger statement about what happens when corporations, politicians, and the public become distracted by scapegoats instead of listening to the people who are actually telling us where the problems are. It doesn’t quite get there, and I wish it did.

Still, Free Fall creates a compelling narrative, and it’s very much a documentary that, if you ever want to fly again, you should probably not watch. If you have to fly and cannot avoid it, do not watch this documentary. But if you’re on the fence and thinking, well, maybe I could take a train or drive, then sure, check this out. I can’t imagine anybody watching Free Fall and immediately wanting to fly. It’s like jumping on a cruise ship right after finishing Titanic. There’s footage of someone getting into a Boeing facility and asking someone who works on the planes if he would fly on a Boeing airplane. The guy laughs like it’s a crazy question. He’s then asked if he had an all-inclusive vacation completely paid for and all he had to do was get on a plane, would he take his family? His answer is still a firm no. This is a guy who builds the planes. If you go to a restaurant and ask the people in the kitchen if they would eat the food they’re making and they all tell you no, that’s cause for concern.

So Free Fall is a follow-up documentary because apparently Downfall didn’t finish the conversation. It has to come back around, wrap things up, and shine an even brighter light on Boeing and its continued problems because it’s entirely possible that they are not fixed. This isn’t necessarily concluded. It isn’t safely behind us. It is still something we should be aware of and following. In that respect, the sequel nature of Free Fall becomes both its biggest weakness and the reason it needs to exist. It doesn’t have the explosive revelations of a documentary discovering the problem for the first time because we’re already supposed to know there is a problem. Free Fall is the angry neighbor knocking on the door again because apparently we didn’t listen.

There’s also some wonderful audio description here from Iyuno. I’ve noticed their work recently on another project I’ve been enjoying, The Five-Star Weekend on Peacock, and there’s some lush audio description here for a documentary. Free Fall has quite a few talking-head moments and doesn’t always leave a ton of room for description, but there are some wonderful moments where the audio description manages to bring out what it can within those limitations. I was fairly impressed with the work. The only criticism I could make is that the narrator is a little under-aggressive in terms of standing out against the voices already in the film. At first, I didn’t realize he was the audio description narrator. I thought he might be some kind of built-in narrator supporting the story. Once I started paying attention to what he was actually saying, I realized that was the audio description. He almost blended in too well, hiding in plain sight. That’s not the worst thing in the world, and I’m glad he’s human.

If you’re already determined to never fly again, Free Fall: A Reckoning for Boeing is a documentary worth watching so you can tell all of your friends and family they should never fly again either. It’s shocking. It’s incendiary. It makes a convincing argument that the Boeing story isn’t over, and that perhaps the most disturbing part is how much of it still feels unresolved. But considering everything it has sitting in front of it, Free Fall still could have lit a much bigger fire than it does.

Fresh: 8.1/10