Most reviewers loved this film. Not me.
Flight (Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman) – Denzel Washington is America’s greatest living actor, I believe. He proves it again in Flight, playing a highly flawed pilot who pulls off the impossible on an ill-fated trip to Atlanta. Surround Washington with an award-winning director, Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Back to the Future, Polar Express), and gifted actors like Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, and John Goodman (as an off-beat drug provider) and you almost can’t fail. Almost.
Flight is flawed. The plot takes every convenient turn possible. Maybe we have seen too many anti-heroes in recent years, including those played by Washington. Almost all of the most acclaimed television dramas (Dexter, Breaking Bad, Damages, Boss, Weeds) feature these anti-heroes. They possess few, if any, redeeming features but we find ourselves rooting for them anyhow. Washington’s Whip Whitaker winks at his alcoholism, rationalizing his non-sobriety with the knowledge that he is an exceptional pilot. He has many other flaws, too. He has lost his wife and son, uses cocaine to mask his drinking habit, and sleeps around. He is an accident waiting to happen. And one day, through no fault of his own, it does. When his plane’s systems malfunction, his instincts kick in and, despite his drunkenness, employs calm and cool to save most, but not all, of its passengers.
While the movie could have been about the crash (too bad it wasn’t), it focuses mainly on the aftermath, most notably Whip’s inability to deal with the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. Whip is surrounded by enablers, among them his friend and co-worker, Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) and his union’s attorney, Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle).
The best performance in the film might belong to Kelly Reilly (both Sherlock Holmes movies) as a “masseuse of every kind” who overdoses and meets Whip in the hospital. As good as she is, her character is contrived. The relationship that develops between the two of them is equally contrived and forced. Sure, they are co-dependent but there is no way they would hook up the way they do.
As we head toward the seminal moment in the film, Zemeckis and writer John Gatins (whose credits are unimpressive: Real Steel, Norbit, The Shaggy Dog) have a chance to leave the predictable road, but they choose not to. Too bad. By the end of the film, I had a sense that I watched a well-acted TV drama that could have served as an after-school special on the evils of alcoholism. Preachy and improbable, Flight is a bumpy trip.