Sometimes soaring

Rating: 7/10 (11 February 2013)

Robert Zemeckis's first foray into live-action since 2000 is further proof that he is one of the most intelligent mainstream filmmakers working today. He does precisely what popular artists should: render complex themes accessible and entertaining. Like Forrest Gump, Contact and Cast Away, Flight focuses on a single character as an archetype for broader human truths.
Denzel Washington plays Whip Whitaker, an airline pilot who gets wasted on booze and coke, goes to work, and then saves a hundred souls from certain death. It's a simple story that unleashes myriad moral and ethical minions into the mind.
The plane crash itself is handled with the kind of technical aplomb we've come to expect after Cast Away's memorable opening plunge. Zemeckis enhances the tension and horror by shooting the scene almost entirely from within the plane. "Oh my God!" cried a member of my audience as the sequence came to an end. It was more apt a reaction than she may have known. As the plane comes down it strikes the spire of a church, and thereon the references to God, faith and redemption are numerous. The mechanical failure that causes the crash is defined as an "Act of God". To take this literally would be to say that God willed that the passengers should die. Whip effectively defies the will of God. Therefore, in the eyes of believers, Whip is a sinner not because he was drunk but because he saved those on board. It's a clever dissection of religious moral logic.
Washington captures his character exquisitely, paradoxically by not appearing drunk. This is not the acting-out alcoholism of When a Man Loves a Woman, but the type more likely to exist in the real world, of inward-facing lies and outward-facing confidence. There's a telling scene, about two hours in, when Whip makes a booze-fuelled visit to his estranged family. They call him a failure. Dramatically expelled from the house, he finds himself face-to-face with reporters on the doorstep. They call him a hero.
For me, the main problem with the film is the distracting sub-plot involving a heroin addict, Nicole (Kelly Reilly). She's something of a cipher, seemingly serving to symbolise the universality of addiction – a laudable idea, but one that also serves to swell the running time. The relationship between Whip and Nicole never fully convinces.
Also, the soundtrack is agonisingly literal. The film opens with Barenaked Ladies' "Alcohol". We get "Under the Bridge" by the Chilli Peppers. We get two versions of "Feelin' Alright". I mean, you could sketch the narrative just by reading the soundtrack listing.
In the end the film slithers into sentimental mulch, as if to compensate for the genuine edginess of some of the earlier scenes (usually involving John Goodman's amusingly amoral Harling Mays). But this final drop-off shouldn't detract too much from what came before: skilfully played, technically outstanding, and morally ambiguous.