A great film about the life of a drunk

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2012)

Flight is one of the few movies I've been waiting a long time from Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away, Back to the future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and Denzel Washington to come back to the screen. Denzel stars as a captain pilot who was able to crash a plane and injure many people and survive while under the influence of alcohol. Denzel the pilot of the film knows very well he had alcohol while operating the plane and was the cause of the incident. But meanwhile some lawyers one of them played by Don Cheadle, explains to him that they can get him out of this predicament he is in by saying that it wasn't him that caused the crash but rather say that the plane had some mechanical defects that were expired from 2011 that was responsible. And most of the movie is about Denzel trying to stay sober but has trouble in the process while under investigation from the police and media trying to get him to ask questions about his accident.
Some people that I have known have asked me was why watch a film that has airplane passengers that get severely injured and die. But that isn't really the focus of the film. The film is about what it should be, the main character played by Washington. He has got to be one of the worst drunks in movie history. He disobeys his orders to not drink while under probation, lies about not having alcohol in his system while flying the plane, yells obscenities in front of his girlfriend, he even shows up drunk out of his mind in front of his son and ex wife! He is just an intoxicated bastard who enjoys the pleasure of drunkenness and will do anything to get keep his addiction going. But in the end when the court asks him about if he did in fact have booze in his system while operating the plane at first his says he didn't but then he confesses that he really did cause the plane to crash and responsible for the deaths and injuries he passed on the passengers.
In a lot of ways what I liked is that he admits that he had a drug problem and actually takes punishment for it. He ends up in jail and says that he will never have a career as a pilot because of his behaviour. Which I can admire because in real life people even famous ones do crimes and yet walk away from them or get lawyers to talk them out of them.
Director Robert Zemeckis has done a great job of directing this film and even though it's almost as good as some of his earlier work it is still a great comeback after having a couple of movies that didn't do so well critically. If you're a fan of Denzel Washington or maybe of fan of movies about drug addiction I strongly recommend Flight.