Movie review: Flight | canada.com

Starring:?Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, Kelly Reilly

Rating:?3 out of 5

Robert Zemeckis knows the value of spectacle. As one of Steven Spielberg?s acolytes from the sect of special effects, the Oscar-winning director of?Forrest Gump?understands how excited we moviegoers get over a mind-blowing montage that resembles a real disaster.
In?Cast Away,?he also learned you can front-load that spectacle in the first 20 minutes of the reel and then coast for hours with a character-driven denouement featuring little more than a man and a volleyball.
Flight?shares the same cinematic fuselage as?Cast Away?as it kicks off with an eye-popping plane crash sequence that sets the rest of the plot in motion, but this survival story takes place on a decidedly different deserted isle.
Flight?is a story of personal exile and salvation, and as such, the stakes are that much higher because all the real drama takes place within the heart and soul of our central character, Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington).
Whip is a former Navy pilot ? a fact made bare in the opening sequence as we pan over his military tattoo as he lies, post-coital, in the bed of an airport hotel. His roommate is a very attractive woman who resists clothing (Nadine Velasquez), and for a brief moment, the whole love nest has a very sketchy look.
Drugs and booze litter the upscale surroundings, but when the two suit up for work donning flight crew uniforms, the notion of consequence bulldozes into the frame.
To overcome the liquor-induced grogginess, Whip snorts a line of cocaine seconds before boarding the aircraft. Once he?s strapped in, he pours three bottles of vodka into his Minute Maid and grabs the throttle.
Clearly, Whip is not your standard hero. He?s a weak man who surrendered to a stiff addiction years ago, but so far, he?s functional. In fact, he?s so accustomed to operating under the influence, that when the aircraft begins to experience mechanical trouble, Whip immediately switches into fast-acting survival mode.
Without a single tremor or moment of hesitation, Whip battles for control of the plummeting jetliner. Every siren and alarm is blasting through the cockpit, but Whip is calm and collected as he tries everything under the sun to pull up.
It?s no use. The only way to stop the death drop is to turn the plane upside down, which he does. Seconds later, the plane is on the ground in pieces and Whip is taken to the hospital alongside the other survivors.
The news outlets herald Whip as a real hero for pulling off the impossible, but when the toxicology report shows Whip was drunk and high, the very word ?hero? becomes suspect.
Can Whip still be a hero if he was under the influence? Even though everyone around him agrees the feat was nothing short of miraculous, should a drunken pilot get off the hook just because he saved the day?
This is where Zemeckis places the dramatic emphasis, but it?s also where the movie loses altitude because every bone in our communal body yearns for Denzel Washington to be a hero.
The Oscar-winning actor embodies the very essence of the heroic stereotype: manly, muscular, intelligent, human and just a little cocky. The same could be said of the role itself as Whip Whitaker seems to be a loose interpretation of Sully Sullenberger, the real-life pilot who landed a crippled jet safely on the Hudson.
We want Whip to be celebrated, but Zemeckis wants us to question heroism as a whole and designs countless naysayers and pragmatic advisors to tease out the moral tangle.
Don Cheadle plays the smarmy lawyer who will kill off the toxicology report, Bruce Greenwood plays the fellow pilot and union representative looking to save his buddy ? as well as pilot jobs ? and John Goodman plays the ponytailed drug dealer.
Where Tom Hanks was given an inflatable ball and a figure skate to chisel out his heroic denouement in?Cast Away,?Washington?s big moment amounts to an epic stare-down with the bar fridge.
Of course, we are rooting for Whip every step along the way because he?s Denzel Washington, and Washington is one of those actors who is watchable in just about anything.
Even when Whip is at his worst, we?re pulled into his wake because we can feel the swirling emotions beneath the surface. That?s Washington doing that, not the deeply flawed script by John Gatins that drags this movie off-course more than once.
Perhaps Gatins figured he could emulate?Cast Away?s structure and substitute areas of physical survival with emotional endurance, but the chosen device doesn?t really work because he clutters Whip?s struggle for truth with entirely disconnected plotlines.
The most forced element is the romantic connection between Whip and a recovering drug user played by Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes). The two lost souls are supposed to mirror each other and ramp up the emotional ante, but it mostly feels like cheap distraction.
By the end of the reel, even the spectacular crash sequence feels a little cheap because Zemeckis fails to use any of the big tricks to great effect. The only thing that truly works is Washington. Even with film flaps down and a dead cinematic engine, Washington has enough thespian throttle to keep?Flight?in the air for the duration, and land it safely on the tarmac of expectation.

Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/11/02/movie-review-flight/

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