Washington Soars But This Flight Has More Than One Bumpy Landing

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2012)

That Denzel Washington is a movie star of the first rank is proved once again in Robert Zemeckis' 2012 crisis-driven character study, a film that starts out very strong but then turns into something of a morality play about addiction and personal accountability. Despite the slowdown in the narrative momentum, the actor lends a chilling honesty and his considerable charisma to his textured portrayal of Whip Whitaker, an ace commercial pilot for a regional Southern airline whose debilitating alcoholism forces him to live in a world of denial and distrust. He's middle-age, divorced, and estranged from his son, but he can still party hard with a sexy flight attendant and fly a jet airliner the morning after with the help of a line of cocaine. Their 9AM flight to Atlanta faces severe turbulence upon take-off, but it's nothing Whip can't handle with his skillful bravado intact. Having achieved momentary calm, he falls asleep at the controls after downing a couple of airline-size bottles of vodka mixed with orange juice. Suddenly the jet loses its hydraulics and descends uncontrollably with its engines on fire.
To the shock of his by-the-book co-pilot, Whip decides to invert the plane and fly it upside down to achieve some stability in order to maneuver a last-ditch attempt at an emergency landing in an open field populated with a congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Miraculously, only six of 102 passengers and crew perish upon impact, and Whip is hailed as a hero much like Sully Sullenberger after he heroically saved a jet on the Hudson River. This exacting sequence is as thrilling as they come in the movies, and Zemeckis ("Cast Away") brings a propulsive realism to what must have seemed like a fantastical idea in John Gatins' screenplay. What follows this life-changing incident is far less unique as it becomes clear that Whip's blood alcohol count was well over the legal limit during the flight, and the ensuing investigation could easily destroy his career and send him to prison on manslaughter charges. He gets help from former colleague Charlie Anderson, the pilots' union representative for the airline, as well as Hugh Lang, a severely humorless lawyer who is pushing hard to discredit the toxicology reports which prove Whip's unfit condition for flying. The ongoing public pressure of the case sends Whip into isolation at his late father's farm where he begins another downward spiral into alcohol.
He gets involved with recovering heroin addict Nicole whose own story of desperation is juxtaposed with his until they meet at the hospital and enter into a relationship. All this leads to a climactic hearing with the National Transportation Safety Board where his fate will be determined. Washington is on screen for nearly the film's entire 139- minute running time, and his impassioned performance is fiercely without vanity. He is unafraid to show Whip's pathetic denial of accountability and brings a palpable face to his character's substance abuse. The supporting cast is solid with Don Cheadle lending a calm Machiavellian spirit to Lang and Bruce Greenwood a stalwart presence as unconditionally supportive Charlie. British actress Kelly Reilly ("Mrs. Henderson Presents") sports a convincing Southern accent, but I found her a bit too languid as Nicole. In pure scene-stealing mode, John Goodman plays Whip's unapologetic drug dealer Harling Mays like he was redoing Walter Sobchak in "The Big Lebowski". It's a comically anomalous turn but something of a relief especially during the sturm-und-drang of the film's second half. Speaking of which, Zemeckis and Gatins' unsubtle storytelling approach resuscitates all-too-familiar scenes of alcohol abuse that make the story feel more predictable than it had to be as the inevitable events play themselves out. Regardless, Washington makes the film eminently watchable.