Review of Flight (2012) by Jake W — 13 Dec 2014

The majority of scenes in trailers and TV spots for this film showed the famous moment where Denzel Washington, whose plane is about to crash, minimizes the impact by flying the plane upside down. That is indeed a pivotal moment, but that is not the main basis for the film.

After said moment happens in this film, it goes in a whole other direction, but that's not a bad thing. After heroically saving the passengers on his plane, Washington's pilot character, Whip Whitaker, faces the possibility of going to jail because of alcohol found in his bloodstream. As the film shows, Whip is a severe alcoholic, as well as a cocaine addict, and the rest of the movie is about him trying to fight his addiction as he prepares for the formal inquiry he must face.

Washington is in fine form, and his Oscar nomination for his this film was well-deserved. Kelly Reilly is also good as Nicole, a heroin addict who begins a romance with Whip, and while the romance does form a good subplot, it also makes the movie about 20 minutes too long (it clocks in at about 138 minutes).

John Goodman and Don Cheadle are also good as Whip's drug dealer and lawyer respectively, and in his first live-action film since Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis shows he still has it as a director. This isn't the greatest film on all these people's resumes, but it's still very solid with more positives than negatives. 8/10.