Interesting movie with one of 2012's finest performances

Rating: 6/10 (8 January 2015)

"Flight" is the newest film by Academy-Award winning director Robert Zemeckis. You may have seen his work from the "Back to the Future"-trilogy, Forrest Gump or one of his other Tom Hanks collaborations. Here, however, he directs Denzel Washington in his most recent Oscar-nominated performance. The film is written by John Gatins, who also managed to score a nomination. As Washington plays a character who struggles with alcohol addiction for the film's almost 140 minutes, you could certainly interpret the title as the subject to "flee" as well, apart from the obvious reference to him being an airplane pilot.
My favorite scene was maybe how he woke up after the crash in the hospital and sees the television reports on the happenings and also how he asks his friend how many people died and who exactly. Very intense stuff. This is where the film is at its best. Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle and Brian Geraghty deliver strong supporting performances. Also in the film is John Goodman, who I usually like a lot, but here he felt just weird and over the top and I did not feel he added anything of quality to the film. Oh and then there is Kelly Reilly, who played her part well too, although I personally found her sequences less interesting than the ones that had directly to do with the crash. That is also why I was a bit surprised to see her in contention for an Oscar nomination. She wasn't bad, but she wasn't great either.
Anyway, the main reason to watch this film is Washington's excellent performance. A true statement against alcoholism and I really liked the way he played his scenes early on when he knows he is in lots of trouble, even if the country celebrates him as a hero at this point. And even if there are scenes in the first half already where you feel slightly negative about his character, such as everything before the flight, for example how he calls it a video game etc., I felt for him and hoped he could get out of the whole affair without too much damage and preferably an acquittal. The intended flight to Jamaica was realistic, he just wanted to get away from all the troubles and I also really liked one reference at the AA meeting he is at. When one of the speakers talks about 2 beers, it happens that he just told the same lie to his stewardess minutes earlier that he only had two beers before the flight.
Then, in the final act, the fridge full of beverages is the first moment of truth for Washington's character and we don't really get a happy ending, at least not at this point yet. So Goodman's character (a poor man's Wolf from "Pulp Fiction") shows up to get him into shape again with the help of cocaine. This was maybe the worst scene of the film for me. It felt like the writers/directors tried to bring some comedy into the film (just like the first time Goodman appears), but it went totally wrong and sacrificed lots of realism. The only thing I kinda liked about it was how Cheadle's character manages swiftly to not get involved when they hand Goodman's character the money. The hearing afterward, however, is pretty nicely done again. It seemed to me as if the woman who asked these questions went pretty easy on Washington's character, maybe because he saved so many lives, but he realizes now is the moment to stand up to what he did, even if he will go to jail for it. No more denial. So he did not accuse the dead stewardess he had an affair with and instead admitted everything he did. I liked how a couple minutes earlier the remote was not working and the interrogator had to do it manually, a nice reference to what the central character did in the plane early in the film.
Finally, there was a quote that has him say something like "some of them will forgive me, some of them never will" and I thought some of them already have and as I saw later on the photos from his prison wall with Reilly's character, I was correct. While the central character becomes continuously more unlikeable and his alleged heroic performance loses more and more significance as the film goes on, I did not feel it ever reached true greatness in terms of emotion. However, thanks to its excellent lead performance and a couple high-quality scenes I already mentioned (add to that Washington and Tunie at the funeral), it is certainly worth a watch and does not drag at all despite easily crossing the 2-hour-mark.