Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

 3/4

Rated PG-13 for Some Strong Language

Warning: this documentary will make you mad!

Hubris and corporate greed caused the deaths of hundreds of people.  Two 737 Max jets, Boeing's bright new hope and smash seller, crashed within five months of each other.  None survived in either crash.  Long before the plane even went to market, Boeing was well aware of the technical problems related to its MCAS system.  Not only did they do nothing about it, they deceived everyone into believing it was not a problem.  Further, they cracked down on any concerns regarding the new technology.  Both from the consumers (including Lion Air, who lost one of the aircraft) and their own employees.

Those are the conclusions drawn from "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing."  While it may not be the most innovative or deep documentary out there, it's effective in achieving its goals.  It tells us what happened with the 737 Max and why it was allowed to happen.  It also leaves you with the inescapable conclusion that the executives at Boeing have blood on their hands, and knew all along.  And they did nothing.

For many decades, Boeing was the rockstar of the aerospace engineering world.  They prided themselves on both innovation and safety.  The company was at the top for precisely those reasons.  As one person put it, if someone found a problem, everything was halted until it was fixed.  This was policy and rigorously adhered to.  Then in 1996, everything changed.  Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas and new management  was brought in.  Almost overnight, the culture radically reversed.  Safety and creating good planes were shortchanged in favor of maximizing profits and pleasing Wall Street.  Those who raised any concerns were shut down or fired.  The standards of quality plummeted to the point where trash and equipment were left in finished planes that made it into service.  The list goes on.

Predictably, when a company places short term gains over safety, innovation and even common sense, Boeing's stock price dropped.  And they started facing new competition from Airbus, who became their bitter rival after outselling them young ear after year.  Boeing needed a new hit on their hands, and the deadline was yesterday.  Enter the 737 Max, a redesigned plane that wasn't as subtly redesigned as many were led to believe.  And they broke every rule to get it to market as fast as possible.

On a technical level, the film is competent but unspectacular.  It's no different than a documentary special you'd see on the History Channel or something.  It lacks the flair for storytelling and innovation that a professional documentarian like Alex Gibney or Errol Morris would bring.  That doesn't bother me though.  "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" has enough facts and interviews to hammer Boeing and its corporate culture until it is battered, bruised and left with a once-sterling reputation that may never recover.  What does concern me is information that may have been left out.  The USA Today Editorial Board wanted some hard questions answered when then-CEO Dennis Muilenberg testified to Congress.  They charged that Boeing's cozy relationship with the FAA led them to be police itself.  I wanted answers to this question too, not least because it could raise serious issues that our government needs to address.  Time and time again we have seen other people pay the price for corporate behavior like this (anyone remember the 2008 meltdown?).  If the government isn't as stringent with our safety, money and our lives as they should be, we have a right and a need to know that.  Strangely, this isn't a question that director Rory Kennedy pursues.  The information we are left with is that Boeing played them for fools like everyone else.  But he does mention that the US was the last to ground the airplane model, which raises a lot of concerns.  Kennedy opened this door and should have had the courage to walk through it.

For anyone who knows more or less what happened here, this documentary doesn't shed much new light.  But I believe it's worth seeing for two reasons.  One, it puts a human face on the tragedy with heartbreaking interviews and harrowing (but tasteful) recreations of the crashes.  Manipulative it may be, their success is their own best defense.  And two, it sees clearly and thoroughly the rot that infects modern corporate culture and demands accountability.  Not that Boeing ever saw any.  It faced a $2.5 billion dollar fine (which, for them, is a slap on the wrist).  Muilenberg was tossed out by the board of directors, of course.  But he had a $62 million cash payout to soften the blow.  That's more than can be said for the families that are grieving or the executives who won't see a day in jail no matter how badly they deserve it (this was one of the conditions of the fine).

Welcome to the story of modern day America.