Rory Kennedy thought she was through with Boeing.
The Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind “Last Days in Vietnam” and “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” — and youngest child of late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy — had spent years making “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing,” a 2022 documentary exploring the “profits over people” approach at the airplane manufacturer, from outsourcing its parts to covering up safety issues, that led to a pair of its 737 MAX planes crashing within five months of each other, claiming 346 lives. And then John Barnett, the chief whistleblower against Boeing and key subject of her doc, was found dead in his car in March of 2024, one day prior to his third deposition, under what Kennedy calls “quite suspicious circumstances.”
“I had interviewed John Barnett for ‘Downfall’ and had kept up that relationship with him because he was such a special person,” Kennedy tells Variety. “When he passed away, I was directly in touch with his mom very early on. Over the course of trying to figure out what happened to him and being in touch with his lawyers and really trying to understand the circumstances, that was motivation for me to go back and tell this story.”
So, Kennedy made a follow-up film, “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing,” premiering Aug. 19 on Netflix (just like its predecessor). It follows the investigation into Barnett’s mysterious death and contains testimony from former Boeing employees who contend that the company failed to...
Jang, in his 40s, who also runs a beauty salon and works as an insurance planner, registered himself as a caregiver for insured A, an insurance customer, in April. Afterwards, Jang filed a documen...