Review of Flight (2012) by Joan R — 20 Sep 2014

The trouble with understanding alcoholism as a disease is that those of us who do not suffer from the ailment are required to believe that it is a disease that makes one compelled to consume a narcotic, the way a one is compelled to scratch at a skin disease. I'm not saying that alcoholism isn't a disease, but its concept as a disease is one that can be difficult to swallow. As a result, how much sympathy and patience are we expected to extend to one who suffers from this ailment, especially one who is responsible for hundreds of lives at a time? Would we allow someone who had epilepsy to be a surgeon? And would we allow alcoholics (recovering or not) to operate heavy machinery?

That question is not really answered in this movie, which chooses to show alcoholism as the identifying characteristic of Denzel Washington's character, Whip. His addiction may have had nothing to do with the crash that occurs, but it's still a time bomb that needs to be defused. The problem is that this is nothing we really haven't seen before in other stories. While Washington's performance is top notch, the story itself is lackluster, banking on Washington's likability to get us through the necessary beats that an addiction story must take us through. It makes for an enjoyable enough movie, but not one that anyone is required to see.