“Flight of the Phoenix” is about 12 people who crash-land in Mongolia's desolate Gobi desert, miraculously overcoming thirst, exhaustion and hostile nomads to build a new airplane from the wreckage that theoretically will carry them back to civilization.

And that, my friends, is how ValueJet Airlines was born. Not exactly, but it does make for a cracking tale of suspense, grit and camaraderie — a sure-fire audience pleaser in a movie season otherwise averse to those quote/unquote adrenaline-pumping thrills.

Adapted from Robert Aldrich’s 1966 thriller of the same name, the movie features Dennis Quaid (“Far From Heaven”) as Frank Towns, an airplane pilot and oil company hatchet-man who specializes in shutting down fruitless exploration projects. Frank has just put the kibosh on such a drilling site in Mongolia's San Tang Basin — much to the chagrin of the project leader, Kelly (Miranda Otto of “The Lord of the Rings”) — when his C-119 cargo plane smacks into a dust storm and plummets to Earth, stranding the oil crew and their equipment in the desert with little chance of rescue.

The prognosis is grim. The survivors have 30 days of water, no radio and a decidedly defeatist attitude. After what Frank derisively terms a ‘‘hopes and dreams’’ speech — we share his annoyance, actually — they embark on an audacious plan to build a new plane from the C-119's one remaining prop-engine and two salvageable wings. It won't be easy: the nomads are lurking, fuel is exploding and the mysterious aviation engineer who proposed the project, Elliot (Giovanni Ribisi of “Boiler Room”), turns out to be quite the little tyrant.

Like the plane itself, “Flight of the Phoenix” is a chop-job, welding bits of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat,” David Lean's “A Bridge on the River Kwai” and, possibly, the climactic sequence in “Chicken Run” into place for what proves to be surprisingly air-worthy entertainment.

There are a few bumps — if the survivors can rebuild an airplane, why can’t they rebuild a radio? — but director John Moore (“Behind Enemy Lines”) knows that rigor isn't what keeps these wings aloft: It's gun-wielding savages and certain romantic faith in human ingenuity. As it turns out, we can fix anything with a wrench in our hand and a nice OutKast tune in our ear.