Movie review: Flight - a safe landing

Flight is a moving voyage, and almost entirely turbulence free.  This film stars one of Hollywood’s finest actors, Denzel Washington, who earned an Academy Award nomination for a beautifully nuanced performance of a tortured man battling alcohol and drug addiction.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Flight takes off with a craftily edited flying sequence, both pulsating and terrifying at the same time. In the opening scenes, William “Whip” Whitaker (Denzel Washington), the captain of a 102 passenger plane, and a person who enjoys getting high in more ways than one, is shaken out of his stupor by an alarming situation.

Whip, who had fallen asleep after consuming a forbidden mixture of vodka and orange juice, wakes up to discover that his aircraft has gone into a steep dive after the failure of its control system. Here, the captain brilliantly saves the day by landing in an open field next to a church, though much to the fright of his passengers, including rookie copilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty). This crash landing sequence is absolutely harrowing, bringing to mind actual tragedies that involve plane crashes.

Eventually, Whip finds himself in a hospital, where he is greeted by the hilarious Harling Mays (John Goodman), who is the pilot’s friend and drug dealer. He also meets the representative of the airline pilots’ union, Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood), who tells him that he has been hailed as a hero for saving 96 of the 102 passenger lives.

But Whip doesn’t consider himself to be a hero, and is deeply burdened by feelings of guilt and shame; guilt for the death of others, and shame for being unable to control the need for alcohol. These negative feelings are exacerbated by an official investigation into the plane crash.

Whip isn’t the only character in Flight battling addiction. His love, Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a former heroin abuser, is addicted to bad relationships. Through her turbulent affair with Whip, she learns valuable lessons, eventually letting go of her own baggage in Flight.

Despite being a character prone to making bad choices, Whip is highly sympathetic and identifiable, thanks to Washington’s immense talent in conveying complex emotions through subtle changes in facial expressions. And although Flight loses a little altitude in its finale with what is a crowd pleasingly safe landing, the film is still quite a trip.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 24^th, 2013.

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