A serious piece about alcoholism, with some punk rock touches and a phenomenal lead performance

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2013)

Last Friday my girlfriend and I went to the movies and decided to watch two movies instead of the usual one; we didn't think much in our double-feature, I mean in the selection which certainly needs always to be featuring two similar films but not for the obvious reasons (like for instance just because both were directed by the same dude, as Tarantino once remarked), but we just based our selection in the show times: FLIGHT at 17:00 hrs. and THE IMPOSSIBLE at 19:30 hrs.
We knew both were not feel-good experiences, but the similarities we found between them were more than we expected and luckily the double-feature was just damn right, with those magic movie moments – going out from a film that shows and is based upon an air crash to enter to one that begins with a sequence inside of a plane (not to mention that only a couple of a weeks ago I had enter a plane for the first time in years!).
FLIGHT (Robert Zemecki's comeback from "motion capture") and THE IMPOSSIBLE (Juan Antonio Bayona's first feature since 2007's EL ORFANATO) are about the consequences of, respectively, an air crash and a natural disaster. The structure in both is quite similar and none takes much time to show us the disaster (the big, important sequence we all know exists and therefore are waiting); in fact, both do it in a not very different way and at the moment of the impact (of both the plane with the surface and the tsunami) everything gets confused, the lose sound, certainly they are trying to put us in the victims' perspective.
Both films bring us hard and sad issues during almost the whole time to end in an optimistic note (the characters that suffered find some light). "Classic Hollywood style" you might be thinking, and yes, both are comforting for the average viewer (especially THE IMPOSSIBLE) but at the same time never forget that their subject is a tragic one – in FLIGHT the main character doesn't have the best ending (even if he finally finds some peace) and in THE IMPOSSIBLE the horror of the 2004 tsunami is always well exposed.
The first sequence of FLIGHT, with the pilot "Whip" Whitaker (Denzel Washington) waking up together with sexy flight attendant Katerina Marquez (Nadie Velazquez) after a night of sex, alcohol and drugs and just before a commercial flight, left no doubts we were seeing something not very common – this film takes no more than 10 minutes to end with the idea of security and professionalism we have or want to have of a pilot and a flight in general.
With FLIGHT I recalled the good but overrated ARGO, not only because here too we have John Goodman in a little yet very important role but also for its tension. And personally, seeing Washington trying to save his plane from a crash turned out to be as tense, if not more, as seeing Affleck and the group of Americans trying to get out from Iran. Contrary to what happens in ARGO, here the big tension arrives soon; the central theme of FLIGHT is in fact a common issue that has been explored by cinema many times before: alcoholism. FLIGHT, I dare to say, is destined to become a referent of the subject and is definitely one of the best movie about addiction in recent memory.
We also have a look at the world of heroin; yes, one more, and maybe what we get isn't something new but still Zemeckis is doing it right and, for example, gave us a perfect musical selection, in a scene that should have been longer: "Under the Bridge", a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers that's about the consequences of drug addiction, is used to illustrate the character Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict. The soundtrack, by the way, is full of other iconic songs like "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones (Marty Scorsese, anyone?) and "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye – not a surprise since Zemeckis did of the GUMP soundtrack a compilation of classics.
The film puts together those characters (Washington and Reilly) and with this move we get to see the two extremes of an addiction case (besides the romantic side of the picture). With Reilly we have the case with hope, the addict with desires of moving on and remain sober (classic situations like the visit to help groups are featured). On the other hand, the pilot falls in the worst period of his life after the accident, drinking tons of alcohol (few cinema characters drink as much as "Whip") and going through a constant fight (internal and external).
Washington is absolute golden; his performance as an alcoholic can't get more believable, and he is too a "bad motherf*****" at times. And precisely, that "punk rock" touch ends being the extra of a very complete piece. The external fight of "Whip", for instance, offer us an interesting enough argument for a good climax, even when we know it will be done with the classic "audience at a jury". The key here is the previous sequence to the one of the audience at the jury – one that's totally punk rock, that will surprise you and make you laugh with a John Goodman shining like in the good ol' THE BIG LEBOWSKI days, and a cool as hell Washington completing the circle and repeating the first sequence. Great stuff!
*Watched it on 08 February, 2013