Denzel Washington gives a towering performance in his least sympathetic role to date – as an alcoholic airline pilot
Robert Zemeckis, a protege of Steven Spielberg, is a gifted writer-director who has turned his hand to almost anything from Beatlemania to animation, and has pursued certain themes over the course of some 30 years without achieving the status of auteur. One recurrent subject has been ordinary people suddenly transported into challenging circumstances, most famously the teenager taken back in time in the Back to the Future trilogy. During this past decade, he has been preoccupied with legendary tales retold using motion-capture animation – The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol. Perhaps reacting to this, he has embraced a realistic contemporary story, part thriller, part moral drama.
Scripted by John Gatins, author of several movies of no particular distinction, Flight begins with a deliberately shocking scene, a recreation of something out of Airplane!. An alarm clock goes off in the motel room of handsome "Whip" Whitaker (Denzel Washington). A naked stewardess gets up, goes to the lavatory and returns to begin dressing while Whip wakes up, lights a cigarette, swigs some beer, snorts a line of coke and shares a joke with the girl. He then puts on his civil pilot's uniform, hides behind opaque shades and sets out for the day. Settling down in the cockpit, he orders a black coffee with plenty of sugar and an aspirin, and prepares for a routine 50-minute flight from Orlando, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. His young co-pilot and regular stewardess are no more than slightly alarmed by his ragged appearance. Most of us in the audience thank God we're not among the passengers.
Zemeckis's last picture before his long stretch with animation was Cast Away, in which FedEx official Tom Hanks endured one of cinema's most spectacular aerial calamities before finding himself marooned on a Pacific desert island. The film reprises this incident as a little turbulence following a rainstorm that sends Whip's plane into freefall. The tail flaps fail to function and only the pilot's coolness and ingenuity enable him to take the craft through a 360-degree spin that allows him to crash the plane in an open field with only six fatalities from a flight manifest of 106 passengers.
This bold, economic piece of film-making, worth the price of admission in itself, is accomplished in half an hour, leaving the film-makers nearly two hours to tease out its implications. Whip Whitaker is an antihero who has put trusting passengers' lives at risk by his criminally irresponsible conduct. On the other hand he's a national hero who has saved them from certain death by his brilliant handling of a complex situation that, we're told, would have defeated most experienced colleagues the world over. Should he then be regarded as a public hero and a generously blind eye be turned upon his derelictions? Or should he face the consequences of his conduct, lose his licence and face a long sentence in jail?
Denzel Washington began his career by playing heroic figures, most famously the Christ-like victim of apartheid, Steve Biko, in Cry Freedom. His roles became increasingly human and moderately flawed until these last few years, when he's played a bent LA policeman in Training Day, a New York public transport official suspected of accepting bribes in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and a flamboyant crook in American Gangster. In Flight, he has his most complex, least sympathetic role to date, and he gives a towering performance, dominating the film as he struggles to confront his life, his conscience and his various responsibilities.
He's divorced, estranged from his teenage son, an arrogant man, convinced of his own superiority and incapable of confronting his weaknesses, his offences and his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Recovering from his injuries in hospital, Whip forms a friendship with a good-looking photographer (Kelly Reilly in a conventional, underwritten role), a recovering alcoholic, who takes him to an AA meeting where he remains in denial and walks out. His problem, however, as the film makes clear, is that he lives in an amoral universe where everything and everybody conspires to obscure the moral, ethical and social issues.
The airline pilots' union representative (Bruce Greenwood) is a former naval colleague who wants to protect his old friend and preserve the reputation of the profession. A criminal lawyer (Don Cheadle) is brought in from Chicago, and he perceives his duty towards his client as discrediting the tests that establish the damning alcohol and drug tests. He also takes on the task of getting "act of God" considered as one of the causes of the disaster. The head of the conglomerate that owns the airline is anxious that this accident doesn't affect his other interests, and wants the blame to be attributed to the plane's manufacturers. Whip's colourful drug dealer (John Goodman) just wants to keep his nose clean and get paid for his work.
Ahead lies the ultimate test when the inquiry instituted by the National Transport Safety Board convenes to put Whip on trial. Ironically the music in the hotel lift taking him to face the investigators is a bland version of With a Little Help From My Friends. Zemeckis generally sustains the tension, though the movie is overlong and the full implications of the drama are never fully confronted. But Washington is always there, a substantial antihero with a genuinely tragic dimension. He's a self-destructive individual, faced with a final choice that might involve his own annihilation. The film's title is perhaps intended to make a mythical connection with Icarus, the hubristic hero who flew too close to the sun. Whip, we infer, was pushed in that direction by a father and grandfather also involved in flying. Reported by guardian.co.uk 23 hours ago.
Robert Zemeckis, a protege of Steven Spielberg, is a gifted writer-director who has turned his hand to almost anything from Beatlemania to animation, and has pursued certain themes over the course of some 30 years without achieving the status of auteur. One recurrent subject has been ordinary people suddenly transported into challenging circumstances, most famously the teenager taken back in time in the Back to the Future trilogy. During this past decade, he has been preoccupied with legendary tales retold using motion-capture animation – The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol. Perhaps reacting to this, he has embraced a realistic contemporary story, part thriller, part moral drama.
Scripted by John Gatins, author of several movies of no particular distinction, Flight begins with a deliberately shocking scene, a recreation of something out of Airplane!. An alarm clock goes off in the motel room of handsome "Whip" Whitaker (Denzel Washington). A naked stewardess gets up, goes to the lavatory and returns to begin dressing while Whip wakes up, lights a cigarette, swigs some beer, snorts a line of coke and shares a joke with the girl. He then puts on his civil pilot's uniform, hides behind opaque shades and sets out for the day. Settling down in the cockpit, he orders a black coffee with plenty of sugar and an aspirin, and prepares for a routine 50-minute flight from Orlando, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. His young co-pilot and regular stewardess are no more than slightly alarmed by his ragged appearance. Most of us in the audience thank God we're not among the passengers.
Zemeckis's last picture before his long stretch with animation was Cast Away, in which FedEx official Tom Hanks endured one of cinema's most spectacular aerial calamities before finding himself marooned on a Pacific desert island. The film reprises this incident as a little turbulence following a rainstorm that sends Whip's plane into freefall. The tail flaps fail to function and only the pilot's coolness and ingenuity enable him to take the craft through a 360-degree spin that allows him to crash the plane in an open field with only six fatalities from a flight manifest of 106 passengers.
This bold, economic piece of film-making, worth the price of admission in itself, is accomplished in half an hour, leaving the film-makers nearly two hours to tease out its implications. Whip Whitaker is an antihero who has put trusting passengers' lives at risk by his criminally irresponsible conduct. On the other hand he's a national hero who has saved them from certain death by his brilliant handling of a complex situation that, we're told, would have defeated most experienced colleagues the world over. Should he then be regarded as a public hero and a generously blind eye be turned upon his derelictions? Or should he face the consequences of his conduct, lose his licence and face a long sentence in jail?
Denzel Washington began his career by playing heroic figures, most famously the Christ-like victim of apartheid, Steve Biko, in Cry Freedom. His roles became increasingly human and moderately flawed until these last few years, when he's played a bent LA policeman in Training Day, a New York public transport official suspected of accepting bribes in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and a flamboyant crook in American Gangster. In Flight, he has his most complex, least sympathetic role to date, and he gives a towering performance, dominating the film as he struggles to confront his life, his conscience and his various responsibilities.
He's divorced, estranged from his teenage son, an arrogant man, convinced of his own superiority and incapable of confronting his weaknesses, his offences and his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Recovering from his injuries in hospital, Whip forms a friendship with a good-looking photographer (Kelly Reilly in a conventional, underwritten role), a recovering alcoholic, who takes him to an AA meeting where he remains in denial and walks out. His problem, however, as the film makes clear, is that he lives in an amoral universe where everything and everybody conspires to obscure the moral, ethical and social issues.
The airline pilots' union representative (Bruce Greenwood) is a former naval colleague who wants to protect his old friend and preserve the reputation of the profession. A criminal lawyer (Don Cheadle) is brought in from Chicago, and he perceives his duty towards his client as discrediting the tests that establish the damning alcohol and drug tests. He also takes on the task of getting "act of God" considered as one of the causes of the disaster. The head of the conglomerate that owns the airline is anxious that this accident doesn't affect his other interests, and wants the blame to be attributed to the plane's manufacturers. Whip's colourful drug dealer (John Goodman) just wants to keep his nose clean and get paid for his work.
Ahead lies the ultimate test when the inquiry instituted by the National Transport Safety Board convenes to put Whip on trial. Ironically the music in the hotel lift taking him to face the investigators is a bland version of With a Little Help From My Friends. Zemeckis generally sustains the tension, though the movie is overlong and the full implications of the drama are never fully confronted. But Washington is always there, a substantial antihero with a genuinely tragic dimension. He's a self-destructive individual, faced with a final choice that might involve his own annihilation. The film's title is perhaps intended to make a mythical connection with Icarus, the hubristic hero who flew too close to the sun. Whip, we infer, was pushed in that direction by a father and grandfather also involved in flying. Reported by guardian.co.uk 23 hours ago.