Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Cr. Courtesy of AIRFLIX-Maxwell Archives.
Rory Kennedy’s 2022 doc Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was an engaging and blood-curdling examination against the Boeing company and all the inhuman unaccountability from the companies. The documentation of the executives’ complete disregard for the safety complaints of the workers who constructed the aircraft that led to the 346 fatalities in the 2018 and 2019 Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes was so severe that Ted Cruz was depicted as being mildly compliant when he reprimanded the then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg. You know how much you have to screw up for Ted Cruz to be presented as a reasonable person?
At the end of Downfall, it seemed that Boeing claimed to have fixed its speedy Airbus constructions and lack of air safety measures, with the equivalence of Tony Hayward’s South Park-spoofed apology that will make you go “Sure, Jan.” Then, on January 5, 2024, the door plug on the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 opened mid‑air and traumatized a whole Airbus of passengers. Now Kennedy awoke from her slumber with her follow-up doc diss track, Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Only to make the same talking points but from a whistleblower-oriented angle. Nevertheless, whatever was discussed prior about the systematic corporate greed within Boeing’s higher-ups at the expense of the lives of thousands of American people is only retreaded and does not provide an actual reckoning in this generic, flightless sequel.
Freefall is less of an examination and more of an update on the malpractices in Boeing’s manufacturing factories, as brought up by its workers. The film presents a dual narrative: it threads together the efforts of surviving families from the earlier crashes as they fight for accountability, alongside the story of late whistleblower John Barnett, whose 2024 suicide was tied to his Boeing deposition case.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Dominic Gates in Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
The doc also improves on its style. Gone are the visually horrendous CG reenactments; instead, it relies more on firsthand footage from live sources. The Alaska Airlines incident—which doesn’t surface until the final reel, alongside the tragic details of Barnett’s death—is composed of passenger footage and survivor narration, adding to the terror and rage‑inducing weight of what led to the incident.
Barnett, who was featured in the predecessor, dedicated more than 30 years of his life working for Boeing as quality control and a manager. The film documents his extensive, candid relationship and reports throughout his tenure through auditory and archival footage recordings. It reveals the harrowing quality issues in numerous Airbuses and his frequent safety concerns from his perspective. He heeded warnings to all the right places, yet his superiors transferred him from department to department until he was compelled to retire in 2017. The doc’s narrative is largely shaped from Barnett’s first-person accounts and though it’s narratively clearer in structure, it’s also a respectable tribute to his efforts and a legacy very well immortalized.
The film discloses new information regarding corporate greed in many facets. One being Boeing’s expansion to new bases, with a particular emphasis on the South Carolina plant, which was constructed in 2009 in response to the unionization of its workers at the original base in Washington state. However, a former governor, Nikki Haley, asserted that South Carolina had no unions, making it the most appealing location for the company.
Every tale or footage captured from the South Carolina plant, especially from Barnett, is a horror story. Like clockwork, the factory employees who were stationed there, when brought to attention by their superiors, were retaliated against, favoring quantity over quality for shareholder pockets. But nothing was more frightening than hearing the lengths that the company went to keep its concerned employees silent and in their place. One detail that boiled my blood is its discussion of how the manufactured parts for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were all outsourced by different companies around the world, Frankenstein-ing the Airbus, and surprise, surprise, different parts of the plane failed to piece together on arrival. But that wasn’t going to stop upper management from shipping them to airlines.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Freefall brings awareness fine enough, better than the first in some cases, but doesn’t make any arguments or thread the needle in addressing how systematic change can come. Addressing is not a substitute for activism. There’s more nuance in the ladder of incompetent power that is responsible for these crashes to happen that only lands on the CEOs. While yes, they are responsible, especially against the clips of them discussing their stock prices and market share business jargon on business news programs. However, the film omits the culpability of the quality assurers above the factory workers, who damn them for their concerns and internal whistleblowers, those people’s job recruiters, and the board whose constant responses to when a CEO appears in front of Congress is to replace them when ripped apart on main. It’s an entire chain, but Kennedy only points fingers at the top and keeps its attention there.
Freefall serves as another effectively infuriating deep dive into Boeing’s negligence and malpractice. This time illustrating how the Alaska airline catastrophe came to be while honoring the whistleblowers whose attempts to heed warnings are brought to light. However, it repeats what viewers of the first already know, ending in the same spot beat-for-beat as its predecessor, this time using 2024 footage of Senator Josh Hawley reprimanding then-CEO Dave Calhoun. It will make your blood boil, but it won’t tell you where to direct the heat—and for a documentary about accountability, that feels like the biggest failure of all. But it will always be “screw Boeing,” now and forever.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing. Cr. Courtesy of AIRFLIX-Maxwell Archives.
