This flight didn't even make it off the runway

Rating: 1/10 (14 November 2013)

I don't know why this film garnered an average 7 star review (as of this post). First of all, the movie was way way WAY too long for the subject matter. At least 30 minutes could have been cut, easily. Even still, the material as written was not suitable for a feature film; a TV movie perhaps. Maybe it was DW's performance that was lacking, but his character was pretty superficial and didn't have an arc worthy of a motion picture. So he's a man who gets drunk all the timeyeah and??? What's the big dramatic premise in that?
He doesn't seem to be on any particular journey (except from addiction to sobriety, but again, who cares?), therefore the audience has no reason to care about him or his predicament. I was completely indifferent to what happened to him. Then they threw in these random characters that didn't seem to serve any purpose to the story, such as the drug addict whom he meets in the hallway at the hospital and later has sex with.
I just didn't think this film was worth watching. I only did because it was on Netflix streaming. If I had paid money to see it in the theater, I'm sure I'd have felt cheated. They took what happened to the Alaskan Airlines flight off the coast of CA several years ago (the jackscrew failed due to inadequate maintenance) and tossed it in with an alcoholic pilot and some randomly stuck in characters; again I ask, who wants to see a pilot get drunk? It obviously wasn't the reason for the crash, and he was able to save the plane in spite of being drunk. This leaves only his personal battle with alcohol addiction as the sole dramatic driving force if the story, and that alone just isn't enough to carry a film. Two thumbs down.