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.