I choose to drink.

Rating: 5/10 (30 December 2014)

This movie can only truly be appreciated by alcoholics. Not because their life experiences will better inform them of the movie's nuances, but because you have to be drunk to enjoy it. Also, this movie doesn't have any nuances.
The only highlight of the movie is Denzel Washington's fascinating performance. His glassy-eyed stare, slurred speech, and baffled facial expressions are so plausible that I'm convinced he was actually drunk while filming. I'm sure he read the ham-handed script (or at least part of it) and decided that he wouldn't be able to get through the shoot sober.
There's a subplot involving a sexy heroin addict with a heart of gold, but nobody cares about that. The soundtrack uses pop songs about heroin (Under the Bridge, Gimme Shelter) during her scenes, which is helpful because I found myself forgetting that she was even in the movie and I needed to be reminded every so often what her drama was. Presumably the actress was also actually using heroin during filming and either died of an overdose or stopped showing up, because she vanishes shortly after the halfway point. Not that I'm complaining.
All of this stuff goes on and on in predictable ways, ends in a corny moral lesson, and Denzel takes home a paycheck large enough to install a whole new government in Uganda.
To be totally honest, I think the whole movie was just an excuse for Robert Zemeckis to meet Nadine Velazquez.