Review of Flight (2012) by Jonathan B — 28 Nov 2014

It's nice to see Robert Zemeckis actually make a good film again. Flight presents a welcome comeback for Robert Zemeckis and also provides another showcase for one of the best actors in the business; Denzel Washington.

When your film starts off with a pilot doing a line of coke you know some bad things are about to happen. The film starts off with a very raw and unsettling plane disaster that is filmed absolutely excellently as is the rest of the film. The disaster also has really good effects, seeing as how it's the only part of the film where a big part of the modest budget would need to be spent, they used it wisely. Whilst the soundtrack to the film is good, there was one too many pre existing songs chosen and at points they become really overbearing to what's going on. I also like how the film stopped itself from showing needless sex scenes, right before I thought one was about to happen it cut and moved on, which I appreciate.

The cast in this film is excellent and is led by a powerful performance from Denzel Washington. He plays a great character that generates a lot of emotion from the audience, sometimes we love him sometimes we don't but he always manages to generate a lot of sympathy and I really liked him. The rest of the cast was great too, especially Don Cheadle and John Goodman, I felt like they should have been up for Best Supporting Actor they were that good, I wish we could have seen more of them though. Melissa Leo was good also and unrecognisable in her role, even if it was really small and really odd to see her in that role. Hell, even the cancer guy that is in one scene was great, he was a good character and likeable too and he was on screen barely 5 minutes.

The story is good and the film had a good pace, Whip is a complicated character and he doesn't make things easy for himself. Even though he did a great thing in the plane he was also doing some things that he shouldn't and the way the film goes on and how it is developed is very unpredictable and I didn't know where it was going to go next and it has a really strong ending.

That is, after the film got rolling. I did say that film had a good pace but it does stumble quite a lot in the first hour. I don't think we really needed to see the backstory for Kelly Reilly's character. True that it does give some build up to her, it would have been just as fine if they met where they met without all the other scenes. While her character is important and she does great in the role, for awhile the film just kept going, one scene with Denzel, one with Kelly and it kept repeating itself, it got annoying going from something I cared about to something that should have been edited out. But she does have a good arc and she does have a very powerful final scene even if, to me, it makes her opening scenes even more pointless.

The religious undertones bugged me also, especially because it didn't build to anything. It started off fine with the cancer patient talking about it because it made sense but it just kept going on and on and more people kept talking about it. If I was Whip and I got told that it's thanks to 'God's Power' that I landed the plane I don't think I'd stand for it. Whip had the power and skill to land the plane, not God. However, I did like that the 'Act of God' was a probable cause in the case though, probably because I wanted to see Whip go free. I also don't think the film really focused on one thing all that much, we see a little about his family, a little about his social life, a little about his potential love life, et cetera. These scenes are developed well and nothing feels poorly written, I would just have liked to have seen a little bit more instead of just seemingly dipping their toe in every little bit and calling it a day. You would have thought they would have been able to accomplish that in a film that's nearly two and a half hours, at least in my opinion, obviously. However, it keeps the pace going, nothing felt slow and it does give us insight into quite a lot that Whip does, so maybe that's why.

There wasn't very many of them, which probably helps my point, but there are a few scenes in this that are played for laughs and they really felt out of place, especially because of the heavy subject matter. The film also has a few time skips, nothing major, like anything that takes place over years but some scenes were edited strangely. There's a scene with Denzel and Goodman and they're laughing in a car and I think that should have faded out with the music into the next scene because it ends really abruptly but that's getting a little nitpicky.

It's nice to see Zemeckis doing a good character drama again but maybe he has not relinquished all of the bad habits he picked up from his foray into the animated realm which wasn't really as successful as his previous efforts, not including Roger Rabbit, of course, because that's fantastic. Denzel Washington's layered performance at the centre of the film is enough to give it a watch, he gives the story its impact and it will have you on the edge of your seat, especially at the powerful conclusion. And hey, it has Piers Morgan in it, so, woo?