Piche: Between Heaven And Earth (Slyvain Archambaut, 2010): Canda

Reviewed By Nick Hincapie. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011

“Piche: Between Heaven And Earth” is a film based on the true life of Commander Robert Piche and how he saved 306 passengers aboard his plane in 2001. In the film we see Piche in both the present and in his past when he was involved drug dealing and went to prison for it. I knew absolutely nothing about the film before going in so I was curious to see what this film would be about and if it could hold up in the future or not. The screening that I attended at the festival was pretty crowded so I expected that this film would be pretty good.

At the beginning of the film we see Piche struggling in rehab while also caring for his family. Early on we can see that Piche is good man who cares about his family but sometimes they neglect him for the choices he’s made in his life. Later in the film we jump into Piche’s past and see him in prison for drug dealing. The scenes in the prison are very disturbing as we see men getting raped by other men. Towards the end of the film we jump into Piche’s present time and we finally see plane incident.

The film is well made and I did have a pretty good idea of who Piche was after the screening of the film. The problem I had with the film was with the scenes that took place in the prison because I never really felt like it was necessary to have them in the film. While those scenes were powerful I away’s felt like I was  watching a completely different movie when I saw them. The film general I think is about Piche trying to trying to save the people on the plane and that the scenes in the prison really weren’t connected with all the other parts of the film. I think it would have better if scenes from Piche’s past were a lot shorter or that they wouldv’e played of better if they were in an entirely different movie.

Aside from that one issue the movie completely redeemed itself for me when we saw Piche land the plane safely and rescued all the passengers. Those last ten minutes of the film are very suspenful and I couldn’t take my eye’s off of the screen. The film inspired me a lot and made me admire Piche for what he was able to do. There was a loud applause by the audience at the end of the film so they probably all were very inspired by it as well. For me overall it was a good movie but also flawed and uneven at times.