Review (Blu-ray): FLIGHT (2012)

After a decade of mo-cap kid movies, big ticket director Robert Zemeckis returns from the uncanny valley to live action filmmaking with Flight, a Denzel Washington Oscar-bait vehicle that starts out as spectacular as much of Zemeckis’ prior catalog would lead viewers to expect, with a plane crash sequence even more harrowing than the one that opened Castaway.

The movie follows a similar theme, in a sense: following a mechanical failure, Washington’s Capt. ‘Whip’ Whittaker deploys a spectacular and impossible maneuver to save his crew and passengers, and succeeds for the most part, but for six ‘souls’ (as they are referred to a number of times) who perish in what ends up as a far less severe crash than it could have been. The hero has feet of clay, however: not only does he have an untreated lifelong alcohol problem, but he was drunk as sin during the flight in question—not simply drunk, but that he literally drank while flying. And afterwards, he’s just as isolated and trapped by his addiction as Tom Hanks was on the island with the mute soccer ball Wilson for company.

Did I mention that this opening sequence was harrowing? And for all sorts of reasons besides the thunderstorm and the mechanical failure? How about watching your hungover pilot guzzle a couple of vodka minis?

Afterwards, however, the movie becomes much less concerned with the circumstances surrounding the flight than Whittaker’s journey to the moment that all addicts must reach, besides bottoming out, of course: the moment of admission, if not to a higher power per se, but to themselves that they have a problem. That they are alcoholics. That they are powerless before their addiction. Will Whittaker be able to get to this point?

His enablers, however, won’t let him run out of lies: they aren’t fellow addicts, though, but rather a union rep (Bruce Greenwood) and slick Chicago lawyer (Don Cheadle) who facilitate the very untruths an alcoholic like Whip tells himself and all those around him every day—I didn’t drink; I’m not a drunk; I’m not drunk right now—which are told in this case in order to protect the union and the airline from responsibility.

The movie’s first shot opens with a thematic tell—Whittaker is holed up partying with a comely flight attendant, greeting the alarm clock with a(nother) slug of beer, and a couple of lines of blow to get him into flying shape—in an airport motel called American Value Suites. Indeed, Flight concerns itself not with crashing airplanes but values: personal, cultural, societal. There are covenants among us, in particular those charged with transporting such precious cargo as human souls, and here we see a man disdainful of those sacred agreements, yet for whom ‘it all worked out.’ Does that absolve him? It’s a terrifically interesting central conflict.

Flight is an compelling film about ideas and character, and well worth viewing alone for Washington’s nuanced, ultimately heart-wrenching portrayal of a man in crisis and a man in denial, but a hero far from inadvertent: no one can fly a plane the way Whip Whittaker did that day, just as no one can fly anyone else’s but their own: a fine metaphor for the journey from addiction to sobriety.

Flight is nominated for two 2012 Oscars, Original Screenplay (John Gatins) and Best Actor. The venerable movie star Washington, whose body of ongoing work argues for his place in the pantheon of Hollywood players as a modern day Jimmy Stewart, has rarely been better, and would be a worthy awardee this year. Strong overall recommendation for this impeccably presented blu-ray from Paramount.