'Iron Maiden: Flight 666': Heavy metal’s finest goes airborne in inspired documentary
If you’re looking for “Spinal Tap” jokes, you won’t find them here. Sure, that “mock-umentary” did a great job nailing the vacuous hilarity at the heart of bloated ’80s heavy metal, and it made just about every rock documentary that followed in its wake seem like at least a bit of a joke.
Iron Maiden, however, has never fit the accepted mold, nor followed the rules. And with its brilliant new “road movie” “Flight 666,” the band shows no sign of doing so — now or ever.
IRON MAIDEN: FLIGHT 666
Four stars
STARRING: Steve Harris, Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith, Nicko McBrain, Dave Murray and Rod Smallwood
DIRECTOR: Sam Dunn and Scott McFadyen
RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes
RATING: Not rated, but contains some adult language.
THE LOWDOWN: Documentary follows Iron Maiden as it flies its own custom-made Boeing 757 to sold-out concerts worldwide.
From its tongue-in-cheek title to its killer blend of sound and vision, “Flight 666” is the sort of documentary only Maiden — as viewed through the cameras of Toronto filmmakers and Maiden maniacs Scott McFadyen and Sam Dunn — could produce. That’s because it’s much more than a concert movie, though the performance sequences are stellar throughout. The film is at once a tribute to the iconoclastic British metal band and to its rabid international fan base.
It would’ve been a great story, even if Dunn and McFadyen hadn’t been there to film it. The script pretty much wrote itself.
Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson has been many things over the years, including a world-renowned singer and a professional fencer. He also happens to be a fully credentialed pilot, one driven by what seems to be a combination of fearlessness and endless energy. It was Dickinson’s idea to buy a Boeing 757; customize it for band, crew and families; and convert half of it into storage space for all of the musicians’ personal gear and the considerable amount of production equipment needed. There is no precedent for this “do it yourself” mode of international touring. To make matters even more interesting, the band would fly to 13 disparate points on the globe, perform in 23 stadiums, and make it back home within 45 days.
Oh, and Dickinson himself would be flying the plane, by the way.
That the band lived through this experience might in itself seem impressive, but what surely stuns the viewer as the film unfolds is the depth and breadth of the band’s popularity around the world. India, Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Toronto, Mexico — at every stop on the tour, a similar scene erupts: Male and female fans of various ages fill the streets, chant the band’s name, surround them as they enter hotels or deplane at airports, sleep outside for several days leading up to the concert in hopes of claiming a space near the front of the stage and generally behave as if Iron Maiden’s arrival in their city is one of the greatest things that will ever happen in their lives.
It’s a metal equivalent of Beatlemania, the unlikely stars of the show a quintet of humble, down-to-earth family men/musicians in their 50s who still seem uncomfortable with celebrity.
Yes, it’s mostly about the music. Maiden’s epic blend of richly layered guitar harmonies, supple rhythm-section propulsion, grandiose vocals and prog-rock virtuosity remains metal’s most adventurous sound some 30 years into the band’s career.
But “Flight 666” is more concerned with just what that music has meant to a few generations of music lovers around the planet. The film’s most moving scene depicts a young South American Maiden fan clutching a pair of drummer Nicko McBrain’s drumsticks, clinging to the barricade well after the band has left the stage and the lights have come up, and weeping uncontrollably. We understand that these are tears of grateful joy and release.
Explaining the appeal of Maiden’s music is pretty useless. But this highly entertaining film suggests that, after 30 years doggedly pursuing its own brand of musical, professional and personal integrity, Iron Maiden has come to represent something profound to millions of people from diverse cultures. That speaks volumes.•
“Iron Maiden: Flight 666” will play in high-definition digital at Dipson McKinley Mall at 7 p. m. Tuesday. Tickets are $10 and are available in advance at www.dipsontheatres.com and the theater’s box office.
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