Flying high

A reckless alcoholic, who happens to really know how to fly a plane, gets a rather strange and romantic screen treatment in director Robert Zemeckis’ uneven but entertainingly adequate Flight.

As airline pilot Whip Whitaker, who likes vodka, beer, cocaine, cough syrup and flight attendants to excess, Denzel Washington delivers a typically great performance. The movie he’s in could be described as excellent in the first half hour, and just OK after that.

Even though the film drags or gets a bit melodramatic or trite in spots, Washington always manages to hold it up. That’s a tough task because this one clocks in at nearly two and a half hours.

The film opens with Whip, obviously very hungover to the point of still being intoxicated, waking up in a hotel room. A beautiful naked woman prances around while Whip has a tense phone conversation with his ex-wife. Washington plays this scene with a wicked sense of finesse, especially when he leers at the nude woman while arguing with the ex. It’s one of those great “Denzel” moments.

Whip then snorts a line of cocaine, dons some sexy sunglasses and a pilot’s suit, and is off to commandeer a jetliner with more than 100 people on it. Anybody who sees this movie will probably do a little extra scrutinizing of their pilot the next time they prepare to board a plane.

The flight itself is a wonder of filmmaking. Zemeckis has done shocking plane crashes before—Tom Hanks going down in Cast Away—but this sequence is among the best he’s ever directed. It’s amazing enough when Whip pilots the jet through a storm during takeoff. When that plane takes a dramatic plunge later in its flight, eventually flies upside down, and ultimately glides to a crash landing in an open field, it’s a true pulse racer.

The crash results in minimal casualties, and Whip is initially praised as a hero. Then people start seeing the toxicology reports.

Watching Whip deal with his alcoholism and the eventual legal proceedings against him gets a little tedious and, at times, ridiculous. The movie hits a real low when Whip visits his co-pilot in the hospital, who happens to be pumped up on painkillers and far too much religion. It’s a scene the movie didn’t need and should’ve dropped.

I’m also not a fan of how Whip conveniently picks up on an angelic heroin addict during his hospital stay. This is part of the film chickening out and not allowing Washington to simply portray a man alone in a downward spiral. The screenwriter just had to throw in the addict with a heart of gold to make Whip more of a romantic character. Granted, he’s drunk off his ass for much of the romance, but he’s a romantic character all the same.

With Flight, Zemeckis and Washington are faced with making a somewhat despicable man worth rooting for over the course of two-plus hours. In the end, they achieve that feat, but really only because Washington is almost incapable of being totally unlikeable on screen. Heck, you still liked him when his character’s evil ass was getting riddled with much needed bullets in Training Day, right?

Bruce Greenwood and Don Cheadle do good work as the union representative and lawyer trying to save Whip’s career. John Goodman gets some uncomfortable laughs as Whip’s buddy and drug supplier, while Melissa Leo makes a good impression in a short time as a crash investigator.

Flight is ultimately an OK but inconsistent movie about a man’s struggle with alcoholism, with a stunning plane crash thrown in for good measure. Stay tuned for Elizabeth Winestead and Aaron Paul in Smashed, a much better movie on the subject of alcoholism coming soon to a theater near you.