Because of the Olympics, ZDF is currently broadcasting an unusual and powerful thriller from France from 2021, which MeinMMO author Schuhmann would like to recommend. He says “Black Box – Dangerous Truth” is one of the cleverest and most exciting thrillers of recent years, which sheds light on a fascinating field that hardly anyone else tackles: acoustics and aviation technology.
This is how Black Box begins: A plane with 300 passengers crashes. There are no survivors.
Our protagonist Mathieu works as an acoustician for a French authority tasked with investigating precisely such accidents. Mathieu is a brusque eccentric and so good at his job that he gets on everyone’s nerves because his colleagues and superiors don’t hear what he thinks they hear. “He’s a bit crazy,” they think, he hears “ghost noises.” He constantly overinterprets everything. He’s a bit over the top.
Because he has just had a fight with his boss, he is not allowed to take part in this “most important accident of his generation” and is sulking. Meanwhile, his wife, Noémie, is making a career, moving from government to business, and getting a lucrative job at the very company whose plane she has just declared safe.
The two have a mutual friend, the head of a security company who also works in the aviation sector and who got her the job. Yes, there is a lot of cronyism in France. That is the only way to work properly within the excessively strict and annoying security regulations. If you want to be successful, you have to be good at socializing. Matthäus can’t do that; he can listen, but only to the stuttering engine noises and the black box, the recordings of the flight recorder, otherwise he constantly falls out with everyone.
When Mathieu goes to work the next day, his boss has disappeared. He has to step in and investigate the crash. After a lot of fiddling and tinkering with an analysis program, he hears “Allahu Akbar” from the black box in the cockpit – so a terrorist attack?
Black Box – Trailer for the French thriller about a crash analyst
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A thriller that would be hard to imagine in the USA
What makes the film so special? As viewers, we consistently follow Mathieu, who is an unusual protagonist for a thriller and has nothing of the pithy thriller hero. His area of expertise is listening, listening carefully, and what he hears just doesn’t add up and it drives him crazy.
Especially since everyone around them just wants to get the case over with as quickly as possible. The stewardess wasn’t paying attention, a terrorist got into the cockpit and caused the plane to crash. That shouldn’t happen. There’s nothing you can do: human error and terrorism.
But Mathieu starts to dig deeper and encounters fierce resistance at every step; even his own wife quickly thinks he is crazy and overexcited.
A thriller without heroes
“Black Box” is a thriller that would hardly be produced in the USA – the tension comes from an “honest puzzle”, every step is logical and invites you to guess along. More and more information is deciphered from the distorted radio messages, and the picture of what really happened becomes clearer and clearer.
It is intelligent and highly exciting, with a conclusive, thrilling resolution. Here, completely normal people become heroes because they do not take the easy path, but the thorny path where every step hurts and is associated with social exclusion and disadvantages. The view of the characters changes again and again: we see how Mathieu sees his wife in a different light again and again.
Why don’t people know the film? Despite 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is virtually unknown in this country.
The film is somehow unlucky – even now with its free TV premiere. It was actually supposed to be shown on ZDF on Monday evening, July 6th at 10:15 p.m. – but because of the Olympics, it was only shown on Tuesday in the slot when the Monday film is normally repeated, i.e. after midnight.
“Black Box – Dangerous Truth” is also a pretty stupid, run-of-the-mill title for such a strong thriller that really deserves more viewers and listeners.
You can still watch the thriller in the ZDF Mediathek until September 5th. It’s free (via ZDF).
ZDF sometimes has difficulty putting its best thrillers on the program in such a way that they are actually seen by someone. Last year we discussed an excellent thriller from Germany, which ZDF also neglected: ZDF broadcasts one of the best thrillers of recent years at 1 a.m.: Here’s how you can watch it for free