‘Freefall: A Reckoning For Boeing’ is another damning indictment

In 2022, the much-honored documentarian Rory Kennedy made Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, which followed the two 737 MAX crashes the year before and argued that the aviation company had cut corners and underprioritized safety.

Now, four years later, we have Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, a sequel that, like the first, is directed by Kennedy and debuts on Netflix. It follows what’s happened in the years since, including the aftermath of the nonprosecution agreement reached with Boeing during the first Trump Administration.

(Kennedy, if you’re unfamiliar, is the daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, born after her father’s assassination in 1968. She’s the youngest of RFK’s 11 children, and no matter what happens, she’ll never be the worst of them.)

The new film, like its predecessor, makes a very convincing prosecutorial brief that Boeing doesn’t care about safety nearly as much as it should, including the testimony of multiple whistleblowers, video of employees joking that they would never fly on one of the planes, plenty of documentation, and video from inside the cabin of a plane, Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, that nearly crashed in early 2024. The company’s culture comes under scrutiny, spanning several CEOs.

The key story in the film is that of John Barnett, a whistleblower who was featured in the first film, and a man who, as the second film begins, has been found dead during a break in his anti-Boeing deposition in 2024.

Barnett’s death was ruled a suicide, as he shot himself with his own gun and left a note, containing lots of expletives directed at Boeing.

Much like with Jeffrey Epstein, Charlie Kirk, and every Trump assassination attempt, there is plentiful lore online, alleging that Barnett was assassinated. The film, to its credit, doesn’t buy any of this, as while Boeing is guilty of a long list of terrible misdeeds, there is no evidence of them having people whacked. But that doesn’t mean that Boeing didn’t act a lot like the evil corporation from Michael Clayton, minus the assassinations.

But that doesn’t stop some talking heads from stating, probably accurately, that Boeing still bears some responsibility for his death.

The film lays its case, very methodically and convincingly, that Boeing has prioritized profits above all else, and has done so without getting too much into hectoring or pathos. That is, with one exception near the end.

I would really like for documentaries about corporate malfeasance to no longer treat members of Congress grandstanding during hearings as moments of triumph, when in fact instances of that, every single time, are about glory-hogging by spotlight-hungry elected officials. Members of both parties are often guilty of this, but none more often than Sen. Josh Hawley, who does so in the Boeing doc, as well as in several past anti-Facebook documentaries.

Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is now streaming on Netflix.