Flight

I decided to watch one of this years Best Picture Nominated films, Flight, and I have to say it left me grounded at the terminal with no departure in sight.  This film was directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forest Gump and Back to the Future Trilogy) and stars Denzel Washington (Training Day and Malcolm X) as an airline pilot struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.  This movie left me struggling myself, not in the same way as the main character because instead of looking for booze to drink or drugs to score, I was struggling to find a reason as to why this was nominated for Best Picture.

This film starts out very adventurously and on a high note (literally); we see Captain Whip Whitaker (Washington) waking up from a pot, cocaine, and alcohol stupor to one of his flight attendants in the early hours of a flight out of Florida.  We witness the captain finishing his beer from the previous night as well as doing a line or two of coke before the scene ends, breakfast of champions!  The scene jumps to a rainy airport walk-around of his plane.  Then it transitions into Whitaker stepping onto his flight deck where he quickly pushes away from the gate. Through the nasty storm and turbulence, Whitaker aggressively flies, climbing more rapidly than usual and accelerating faster then usual in order to punch through the storm and find the smooth flying skies above the ugly clouds.

This unusual behavior lends itself to the films only impressive sequences as we see inside the cockpit and cabin of one roller coaster of a flight.  Bins are flying open and luggage pops out, we see people dropping from when the plane passes through air pockets, and we see fear in the passengers faces.  Just when you feel all is lost, the plane meets the clear blue sky and the flight has recovered from turmoil and finds itself in the norm.  As Captain Whitaker addresses his flight's passengers, we the audience see his hand (hidden from the passengers and crew) pouring vodka into an open orange juice container...dun dun duunnnn!  Cut scene, sometime later we see Whitaker asleep in his chair while the co-pilot is looking over the plane.  Suddenly, the plane's nose dives sharply and we see all the passengers and flight crew get thrown backwards in their seats while alarms, buzzers and lights of all sorts go crazy.

What we don't know at this point, (spoiler alert!) is that the plane elevator (one of the flaps on the tail allowing for lift and decent) goes haywire due to a worn part.  This failure, as mentioned above, causes the plane to dive steeply which wakes the captain from his hangover/currently drunk/cocaine nap to a surprisingly alert position.  He quickly takes control of the plane and spouts an exorbitant amount of commands to his co-pilot, all of which are followed to the "T".  The plane gets some assistance from the suddenly lowered landing gear, and procedural fuel dump; eventually Whitaker gets a "bright idea" and decides in order to keep the plane from plummeting into the ground, he will instead invert the plane in the sky, meaning turn the plane upside down.  Wh wh wh what?!

During this entire sequence we again see inside the plane, both fore and aft, while it dips and shakes and rolls over.  As you can imagine these wild maneuvers make the passengers scream and cry while things go flying around the cabin, even a little child falls (somehow) out of his seat.  I can go into a ton more detail but I think we can all imagine how terrifying such an event would be, and what kind of fear it would cause.  At the end, Whitaker is able to right the plane in the sky, and fairly "safely" glide it into the ground resulting in: 6 of the around 102 souls on board:dead, numerous injured, and the world calling Captain Whip Whitaker a hero.

 For those who need a movie re-cap:
1. Lots of booze and drugs
2. Turbulence
3. More booze
4. zzzzzzz (not to be confused with Popcorn or Snore's zzzzzzzzz)
5. Catastrophic failure of the elevator flap
6. Disastrous flying
7. Upside down
8. Disastrous flying
9. Right-side up
10. Glide landing
11. Death/Hero

The reason I have given the above breakdown of the already mentioned events of Flight, is because after this all takes place, the film literally stalls.  If Flight's entirety follows the films first 20 or so minutes, then you would have one exhilarating fright flight, however, after the flight's unfortunate turn of events the most exciting thing to happen in this film is the credits.

As you would assume after any disaster there will be an investigation.  In the case of travel related problems the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), will investigate into the disaster looking for evidence pushing the fault of the incident; either operator error, or mechanical/technical error.  As the rest of this film plays out we witness Whitaker's attempts at sobering up, however, these few attempts at self improvement eventually crumble and we then see the good ole captain binge drinking till we the viewer feels like throwing up.

The final scenes show us the trial in which Captain Whip Whitaker is the man being questioned.  During the trial he is asked a series of questions regarding his drinking, whether or not he consumed alcohol on specific days including the day of the flight.  Although he initially lied and told them what they needed to hear to clear his name; he then, after some guilt ridden questions, answers truthfully telling the council before him that not only had he consumed alcohol on the prior days in question, but that he was drunk during the flight and that he was an alcoholic.  Cue the tears, and camera flashes.  Seemed like a pretty expensive P.S.A. to thwart alcoholism if you ask me, and since you are reading my written word on my site, I will go ahead and answer for you: yes.

In the end, Captain Whip Whitaker finds himself in jail for negligent deaths, and seems to honestly be the happiest he has been in years. The NTSB explained to him and the world that the fact was the plane had an error with which it could not recover, yet due to his intoxication he was also to blame.

So, kids at home, don't drink and drive or do drugs, stay in school!*

*this message and more brought to you by POPCORN or SNORE


Final Words: zzz.
I think this film lacked quite a bit to keep audiences on the edge of their seats, especially after the initial intensity; quite a drop off.  Denzel Washington's performance was good and painful, but the story seemed less like a film and more like a PBS special.  If the title was Drunk or Booze instead,  I would say you have yourself a film.   Unless you enjoy watching those movies your teachers showed you in biology, I would probably pass, at the absolute max I would say catch this on cable for free.  Not for children, as it contains: adult language, drugs/alcohol, nudity, adult situations, use your judgement parents.


Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping