Flight

Roger Ebert started his review on the 2012 film, “Flight,” by saying, “After opening with one of the most terrifying flying scenes I've witnessed, in which an airplane is saved by being flown upside down, Robert Zemeckis' "Flight" segues into a brave and tortured performance by Denzel Washington — one of his very best.” Not often does a movie character make a really disturbing personal journey that keeps viewers really feeling sorry the entire time.

Denzel Washington plays Whip Whitaker, a veteran commercial airlines pilot who through his entire career has made an instable lenience for the amount of alcohol and cocaine that would be dangers for a lot of people. At the beginning, he’s finishing an all-night party with a friendly flight attendant named Katerina, played by Nadine Velazquez, and puts himself back into his habits with two lines of cocaine. His co-pilot, played by Brian Geraghty, looks him suspiciously, but Whip puts on dignity and authority from behind his dark pilot glasses.

Their flight takes off in a heavy rainstorm and encounters the type of flight that has the co-pilot shouting, “Oh, Lord!” However, Whip pushes them at high speed into a place of clear sky, before a mechanical malfunction puts the plane into an uncontrollable nosedive. Ebert noted, “Zemeckis and his team portray the terror in the cabin in stomach-churning style. Acting on instinct, seeming cool as ice, the veteran pilot inverts the plane to halt its descent, and it flies level upside-down until he rights it again to glide into a level crash-landing in an open field.”

Ebert continued, “The field, as it happens, is next to a little church, and the way Zemeckis portrays an outdoor baptism on the ground below captures the hyper-realism with which I imagine we notice things when we think we're about to die.” Only six people die in the crash, and Whittaker is called a hero.

Will this close call make him stop drinking? He hides in his grandfather’s farm where he was raised, pours out all his booze and is clean for some time – until he’s told by his union representative (Bruce Greenwood) and his lawyer (Don Cheadle), that blood tests show he was flying drunk. A government hearing is uptight with danger (he faces a possible life sentence). Meanwhile, he becomes friends with a woman named Nicole, played by Kelly Reilly, who he met in the hospital, and she takes him to an AA meeting, but the program is not for him.

It becomes evident that intoxication is more important to Whip than anything else. It caused his marriage to fail and his son doesn’t respect him. One of the most powerful things in Washington’s performance is the way he puts up an expressionless façade to hide his insolent addiction. “No one else could have landed that plane!” he insists, and tests in a flight simulator support his claim. However, no one can deny that he was stoned.

One of the most gripping scenes takes place in a hotel room where Whittaker is being held basically under supervision for the week before his office hearing. At a critical moment, his drug supplier Harling Mays, played by John Goodman, arrives, walking toward the camera in one of many of bright Hawaiian shirts, ready to fight a disaster. Ebert said, “I don't have any idea if cocaine can snap you back from a killer hangover, but I wouldn't count on it.”

Denzel Washington is one of the most sympathetic and amazing of actors, and it’s clear here how is performance never goes over the top but instead is focused on obsessive control. There are many scenes that have emotional displays. A lesser actor might have wanted to act them out. Washington depends on his eyes, his manner and a gift for showing inner emotion. In the way it meets everything needed for a complicated story, this is a great performance.

In the supporting performances, Don Cheadle gives guarded motivations, Greenwood is a loyal friend, Goodman looks like a reliable medic, and Brain Geraghty’s fear in the co-pilot’s seat shows the horror. “Flight,” a title with more than one meaning, is strangely the first live action movie in 12 years by Robert Zemeckis, who looked like he was changing to stop-motion animation (“The Polar Express,” Disney’s “A Christmas Carol”). It is almost perfect. Ebert ended his review by saying, “I can think of another final line of dialogue for Whip Whitaker's character ("My name is Whip, and I'm an alcoholic"), but that's just me.”

This is another Denzel movie that everyone should see. Throughout, you will feel like you’re judging yourself when saying whether or not Denzel is guilty, but deep down, you know that he is. With the way everything plays out, you wouldn’t be surprised by the end result because you always had that feeling in the back of your head. Still, you should see this movie because you will like it.

Alright, we have now ended “Denzel Washington Month.” I hope all of you enjoyed it and look out next month when I will be paying tribute to one of the greatest directors ever.

Man on Fire

The next film we will be looking at is the 2004 wrongfully bashed by critics, “Man on Fire.” When we first meet Creasy, played by Denzel Washington, a tired ex-Special Forces Marine whose training and past deeds we can simply, his feeling is one of general exhaustion and misery. Hoping to escape from everything, he comes to Mexico to be with his old friend and partner Rayburn, played by Christopher Walken, a man who is enjoying the good life, surrounded by girls. He understands Creasy is a man who needs a job more than he needs to be in a relationship and Rayburn quickly finds him one, or at least, an interview for one.

With four kidnappings a day occurring, it’s a little worry that Mexican businessman, Samuel (Marc Anthony), and his American wife, Lisa (Radha Mitchell) are trying to replace the bodyguard they fired. Creasy meets first with Samuel who prepares him for the more important meeting with Lisa. Informing of the qualifications she’s been looking for, Creasy is hired, meets the child, 10-year-old, intelligent as a tick, Lupita, played by Dakota Fanning, a kid with a quick and intrusive head. Her attempts to get to know her bodyguard go twisted when Creasy rejects the child’s attempts at friendship, staying away from any bond that he’ll later regret. He’s the patient professional with a drinking problem, and keeps his emotional distance from this attractive child.

He doesn’t fear for her life, but he wants to end his own. At one point, he tries to shoot himself in the head but the bullet doesn’t fire. Shocked and confused about surviving his own suicide, he looks for meaning and purpose. That comes with Lupita. Jules Brenner said in his review, “For the rest of the first act he completely connects with her and a bond develops between them that is a satisfying wonder to behold.” He trains her for the swim meet at school, taking her from barely third place to first.

Just as they’re getting closer, we get the inevitable feeling that this is a set up for something bad. With all the talk about the kidnapping for riches, we know exactly what is going to happen. When it happens, Creasy kills four corrupt cops in their kidnapping attempt before the surviving ones succeeds in kidnapping her. Brenner noted, “He also takes a bullet in a very serious place, putting him out of commission for awhile. When he learns that the $20 mil ransom exchange went bad and that it's too late to save Pita, the expert on very personal assassination has been unleashed, vowing to take down anyone who had anything to do with the kidnapping.”

His story is brought to the attention of newspaper reporter Mariana, played by Rachel Ticotin, who helps him identify some of the suspects from clues. Creasy then gets them one by one and uses interrogation techniques never seen on NYPD. Brenner said, “Each thug he tracks down furnishes a lead to the next as Creasey works his way up the food chain of the dreaded organization known as "hermanidades." To be one means never to be punished for a crime... any crime, no matter how ruthless and depraved.”

Brenner continued, “This is a first rate revenge yarn, the key to which is to involve us with the people and with the loss that is being revenged. That gets us on the side of the guy doing the avenging and, because of Washington's superb gifts and stores of charisma, he can be casual in the way he exercises them. Because of the value we feel for the loss of the girl, he can do no wrong. We are with him. His tirade of merciless payback and the bloodiness of his punishments raises cheers.”

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland is a man on fire. Brenner said, “He turns in a masterfully structured screenplay which capitalizes on our natural desire to right a wrong and punish the guilty. His first act slowly and assuredly gets us into a man on the end of his rope whose feeling of self worth is revived by love for a little girl. Which makes it all the more dynamic when he goes after the people who took her. The intensity of our feeling of support for his actions depends entirely on how much our feelings are touched by the development of that relationship.” The script was based on the novel by A.J. Quinnell.

Brenner mentioned, “Praise for the writer doesn't minimize the powerfully effective direction by Tony Scott who, if he's to be criticized for anything it would be his visually overflashy scene segues.” However, he got all the other aspects exactly right.

This is a really powerful movie that I think everyone will enjoy if they see it. When you see just how much Denzel loses it when Dakota Fanning gets kidnapped, you could probably relate to this if you were in charge of protecting someone’s kid. Check it out and have a time that you’ll never forget once you watch this.

Look out next week to see what I will finish “Denzel Washington Month” off with.

John Q

Actor-turned-director Nick Cassavetes teams up with TV writer James Kearns to create a sincere but controlling tear-jerker about a good man who breaks under the pressure from outside. John R. McEwen admitted in his review, “Boy, have I been there.” Starring in the 2002 well-deserved crying film, “John Q,” is Denzel Washington, the original “goodman,” straying away from his criminal ways from the previous year’s “Training Day” until we see him as one of us, a desperate man who, when his little son needs an expensive operation that his insurance company won’t pay for, is forced to fight against the law. Also casted, and overqualified, are Robert Duvall and James Woods, who are both really underused that you think why the producers try to pay them. McEwen said, “Maybe it was just the omnidirectional system-bashing message they were eager to get behind. Not content to merely extoll the virtues of standing up for oneself, the film vilifies hospitals, HMOs, police, and the media in a self-righteous treatise on the plight of the working class hero.”

Washington plays Chicago millworker John Q. Archibald, whose recent downgrade to 20 hours per week has him looking for a second job to pay the bills. He and his wife Denise (Kimberly Elise) make a living with their young son Mike (Daniel E. Smith), but when he faints during a Little League baseball game, they rush him to the hospital and find that he is suffering from a long undiagnosed heart enlargement, and needs a new hear immediately. Despite cardiologist Dr. Turner (Woods) recommends immediate decision, hospital director Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche) is not so desperate, since John’s insurance carrier does not cover this type of surgery. McEwen said, “With the self-serving iciness that is apparently the primary job qualification for hospital directors, Ms. Payne informs John that if he can't come up with the $75,000 down payment, Mike's name won't even be placed on the recipient list.”

John desperately tries to raise the money, doing everything from selling his car to accepting donations collected by his church, but when Mike’s condition worsens and Denise is told that their son is about to be discharged, John decides that must really take serious matters. He pulls a gun and take the entire emergency room hostage, including several patients (one including Eddie Griffin) and nurses, and the good doctor, as well, saying that he will start killing people if his son isn’t given the operation. Soon the hospital is surrounded with law enforcement officers and news media, including sneaky Lieutenant Grimes (Duvall), condescending Police Chief Monro (Ray Liotta), and ambitious newsman Tuck Lampley (Paul Johnsson), whose description is so stale he looks on the entire issue as a great moment for money, actually saying the words, “This is my white Bronco.”

McEwen said, “This film reminds me of 1997's Mad City, which had John Travolta taking a bunch of school kids and a museum director at gunpoint to save his job. The difference is that this film actually seems to encourage this sort of vigilante justice, portraying John as an unqualified hero whose desperate methods eventually pay off. Besides the film's pro-vigilante bent, there are numerous instances of emotionally overblown pandering, moments when director Cassavetes may as well have flashed the words "cry now" on the screen.”

Obviously, then you have the actors. McEwen said, “Washington, Woods, and Duvall are so capable, they almost save this schlock-fest from itself. Their technique covers a multitude of sins, and Cassavetes knows that.” Good for him, bad for us.

I don’t understand why this film got bashed really bad from critics. Maybe they thought that, realistically speaking, a father wouldn’t really go that extreme in that situation, but I think they would. Put yourself in John Q’s shoes and you’ll understand why he did what he did in order to make sure his son got the heart operation. Don’t listen to the critics, you should see the movie because I think you will like it.

Look out next week when we look at another powerful movie in “Denzel Washington Month.”

Training Day

“Training Day,” released in 2001, is an equal-opportunity police brutality movie, showing a modern Los Angeles where the black cop is skinner and more dishonest than anybody ever thought the white cops were. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “Alonzo Harris, played by Denzel Washington, makes Popeye Doyle look like Officer Friendly. So extreme is his mad dog behavior, indeed, that it shades over into humor: Washington seems to enjoy a performance that's over the top and down the other side.”

Ebert continued, “He plays Alonzo as the meanest, baddest narcotics cop in the city--a dude who cruises the mean streets in his confiscated customized Caddy, extracting tribute and accumulating graft like a medieval warlord shaking down his serfs.” His pose is that the job must be done this way: If you don’t intimidate the street, it will kill you. This is the lesion he’s teaching Jake Hoyt, played by Ethan Hawke, a young cop who dreams of being promoted to the elite narcotics squad. This is Jake’s first day of training, and he’s being trained by Alonzo to see the reality of streets. Jake’s dream: Get a promotion so he can move his wife and child to a nicer house. This may not become a smart career move. Just as a warm-up, Alonzo forces him to smoke a joint (it turns out to be spiked with PCP): If you turn down gifts on the street, he’s told, “you’ll be dead.” He watches as Jake stops two punks who are raping a girl, and then instead of arresting the rapists, Alonzo carefully and proficiently beats them.

Ridding street justice is what this is all about, Alonzo thinks. The enemy lives outside the law, and you have to chase them there. Jake hallucinates for a while because of the PCP, but decides to join Alonzo on a visit to an old and evil colleague, played by Scott Glenn, on a raid on a drug dealer’s house, on a visit to what looks like Alonzo’s secret second family, and to a restaurant rendezvous with what looks like a group of the best cops who are skilled in graft and payoffs. On their mission there’s a great gun fight, although it doesn’t get enough attention to interrupt Alonzo’s routine. Ebert said, “I'm not saying all of these events in one day are impossible; in the real world, however, by the end of it both cops would be exhausted, and shaking for a druggist for Ben-Gay.”

Is Alonzo being real? Are the city and its cops really this evil? (Ebert said, “I am asking about the movie, not life.”) At first, we think if Alonzo isn’t putting on a show to test the new guy. The new guy thinks that as well – that if he yields to attraction, he’ll get caught. That thought comes to an end when Jake is ordered to kill someone, or be framed for the murder, anyway. Alonzo isn’t the exception to the rule: We can tell by the lunchtime meeting that he’s part of the ruling area.

For Denzel Washington, “Training Day” is a rare antagonist role. He doesn’t look, sound or move like his usual likable characters, and definitely there’s no sign of the football coach from “Remember The Titans.” The movie, directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer keeps pushing him, and by the end, it looks like it pushed him right into real fantasy. Antoine in the earlier scenes looks extreme but maybe believable. By the end, he’s like a criminal from a horror film, indestructible and ruthless.

Ebert said, “A lot of people are going to be leaving the theater as I did, wondering about the logic and plausibility of the last 15 minutes.” There are times when you’re distracted from the action on the screen by the need to go back through the story and try to put together how events could really have ended up this way. However, Ayer’s screenplay is incredible in the way it gives clues and pays them off in unusual ways, so that “Training Day” makes as much sense as movies like this usually can. It might have been better if it had stayed closer to reality, but it doesn’t want to be.

Ebert admitted, “For its kinetic energy and acting zeal, I enjoyed the movie. I like it when actors go for broke.” Ethan Hawke is well cast as the cop who believes “we serve and protect” but has trouble accepting the teaching of Alonzo’s style of serving and protection.

The supporting roles are well-done, especially the retired cop played by Glenn, who looks like he’s sitting on a completely different hidden story. Ebert said, “Aware as I was of its loopholes and excesses, the movie persuaded me to go along for the ride. Of course you can't watch the movie without thinking of the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson sagas, two sides of the same coin, both suggesting the Los Angeles police are not perfect. I found myself wondering what would have happened if the movie had flipped the races, with a rotten white cop showing a black rookie the ropes. Given the way the movie pays off, that might have been doable. But it would have involved flipping the itinerary of the street tours, too; instead of the black cop planting the white boy in the middle of hostile non-white environments, you'd have the white cop taking the black rookie to the white drug-lords; gated mansions in "Traffic" (2001) come to mind.” Not as enjoyable.

Will viewers accept this movie in today’s time, when cops and firemen are known as heroes? Ebert said, “I think maybe so; I think by delaying the movie's opening two weeks, Warner Bros. sidestepped a potential backlash.” Denzel’s performance really got a lot of attention. Second question: It’s been asked if violent movies will become rare after the sad days after the terrorism. The box-office performance of “Training Day” had given the answer.

This is a very surprising movie, especially when seeing Denzel play the villain. I had started watching this movie some time back, but then I ended up watching the whole movie and I was hooked. This is a great movie that I think all of you should check out. If you have not seen this movie and you like Denzel Washington, then you should see it because you will love it and be surprised by seeing him play the villain. He should do it again because he plays a very convincing villain.

Check out next week when I look at a movie that will be defended in “Denzel Washington Month.”

Philadelphia

For this month I will be paying tribute to one of my favorite actors of all time, Denzel Washington. I have wanted to review some of his famous movies for quite a while, and now I will do that. Let’s get started with the 1993 classic, Philadelphia.”

More than a decade after AIDS was first noticed as a sickness, “Philadelphia” is the first time Hollywood has been the subject of a big-budget film. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “No points for timeliness here; made-for-TV docudramas and the independent film "Longtime Companion" have already explored the subject, and "Philadelphia" breaks no new dramatic ground.” Instead, it depends on the safe formula of the courtroom drama to add suspense and resolution to a story that, when you look at it, should have little suspense and only one possible outcome.

However, “Philadelphia” is a very good film, in its own way. For movie fans with a hatred to AIDS but an enthusiasm for actors like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it may help widen the understanding of the condition. Ebert said, “It's a ground-breaker like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), the first major film about an interracial romance; it uses the chemistry of popular stars in a reliable genre to sidestep what looks like controversy.”

The story is about Hanks playing Andrew Beckett, a great lawyer in a big, old-line Philadelphia law firm. We find out before the law firm that Beckett has AIDS. A part of his day is him visiting the clinic. Ebert mentioned, “Charles Wheeler, the senior partner (Jason Robards) hands Beckett a case involving the firm's most important client, and then, a few days later, another lawyer notices on Beckett's forehead the telltale lesions of the skin cancer associated with AIDS.”

Beckett is pulled from the case and his told that he doesn’t have a future with the firm. He thinks he’s being fired for having AIDS.

He’s right. (Wheeler, feeling somehow contagious by his firm, “He brought AIDS into our offices – into our men’s room!”) Beckett wants to take a stand, and sue the law firm. However, his old firm is so powerful that no attorney in Philadelphia wants to defend him, until Beckett finally goes in desperation to Joe Miller, played by Denzel Washington, one of those lawyers who advertises on TV, promising to save your driver’s license.

Miller has homophobia, but agrees to take the case, mostly for the money and exposure. Now the story falls into the usual areas of a courtroom fight, with Mary Steenburgen playing the counsel for the old firm. (Her character has no desire for what is obviously a fraudulent defense, and whispers “I hate this case!” to a member of her team.) The screenplay by Ron Nyswaner works slightly to avoid the standard cliches of the courtroom. Even as the case is progressing, the film’s center of attention changes from the trial to the progress of Beckett’s condition, and we briefly meet his boyfriend (Antonio Banderas) and his family, most notably his mother (Joanne Woodward), whose role is small but gives two of the most powerful moments in the film. By the time the trial reaches the verdict, the predictable result is mostly a counterpoint for the movie’s real ending.

The film was directed by Jonathan Demme, who with Nyswaner finds original ways to deal with some of the inevitable developments of their story. Ebert said, “For example, it's obvious that at some point the scales will fall from the eyes of the Washington character, and he'll realize that his prejudices against homosexuals are wrong; he'll be able to see the Hanks character as a fellow human worthy of affection and respect. Such changes of heart are obligatory (see, for example, Spencer Tracy's acceptance of Sidney Poitier in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner").”

Ebert continued, “But "Philadelphia" doesn't handle that transitional scene with lame dialogue or soppy extrusions of sincerity. Instead, in a brilliant and original scene, Hanks plays an aria from his favorite opera, one he identifies with in his dying state.” Washington isn’t an opera fan, but as the music plays and Hanks talks over it, passionately explaining it, Washington goes through a conversion of the soul. Finally, he sees a man who loves life and does not want to leave it. Then the film cuts to Washington’s home, late at night, as he looks sleeplessly into the dark, and we can get an idea of what he is feeling.

Scenes like that are not only wonderful, but frustrating, because they suggest what the whole movie could have been like if the filmmakers had taken a real chance. Ebert said, “But then the film might not have been made at all; the reassuring rhythms of the courtroom drama, I imagine, are what made this material palatable to the executives in charge of signing the checks.”

“Philadelphia” is a good movie, and sometimes more than that, and Hanks’ performance (which, after all, really exists outside the plot) was one of the best of that year. Eventually, Hollywood had to discuss one of the most important subjects of that time, and with “Philadelphia” that opportunity was taken.

There have been other films that have considered the topic more seriously. This was a good first step.

You should see this movie if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s one of the best movies ever made. Tom Hanks says that he remembers in the first transfusion scene he had met someone who worked in a noodle factory. Hanks spoke with him and the man said that he was always working there, even when he was on his oxygen tank, he’s wheel it into work. Hanks got emotionally talking about this since 53 AIDS patient were in that scene, and 43 had passed. This is now a hard movie for Hanks to watch because he remembers the guy from the noodle factory, and notes that these movies last forever.

What I also love is how Denzel says the lines to other lawyers and judges to explain it to him like he’s a little kid, whether it be the age of four or six. I have used that line before once and I hope that it was proven effective. Like I already mentioned, this is a powerful movie that I think all of you should watch and see it because it is that good.

Look out next week when we look at another amazing film in “Denzel Washington Month.”