Blessed Stranger: After Flight 111

I am tempted to call this movie the "Testament" of air disaster movies. What I mean to say is that "Blessed Stranger" is to the gory air disaster movies like the "Airport" movies... just like "Testament" is to "The Day After" or "Threads". Instead of focusing on the destruction, the special effects, the disaster itself, it focuses on the aftermath, and the people behind it: the survivors.

Well, actually, there are no survivors since, as you know, when Swissair flight 111 went down, 229 people perished. The only survivors are the friends and family of the victims. Although the characters in "Blessed Stranger" are fictitious, the historical background is very realistic.

I loved this movie because it was very sensitive. I have rarely seen actors portraying their roles so well... or tears sound so real. Sure, you might get a tad bored of seeing people crying all the time, but that's the sad reality of grief. Kate Nelligan and Hugh Thompson are outstanding, respectively as the mother of one of the victims, and as a fisherman who helped the rescue efforts, which, as we know, became rather a body and debris collection mission afterwards.

Too bad it's just a made-for-TV movie, that will not be seen again, probably for a long long time. I'm glad that if anyone dared to make a movie out of Swissair flight 111, it was the Canadians, and they did it just right!