Makes a big impact early on but mostly wastes it and the potential in the cast (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 2013)

When it came out everyone knew two things about Flight – it has a dramatic plane crash in it and it represented a shot at an Oscar for Washington. The timing was the usual end quarter 4/quarter 1 period where the big push films tend to come out and the trailer did a great job of showing us the plane crash in too much detail. I understand why it did because by far it is the best part of the film. We open with pointless nudity which seems to only be there so that we can be told that we are watching a "grown-up" film. In retrospect it probably needs to do this because it is not as mature as it thinks it is.
From here we get some establishing of characters before we have the incident on the plane. This scene is intense, dramatic and really well filmed; if you were not engaged by the film by this point, this sequence will do it. Sadly the remainder of the film fritters this all away and never makes the same impact again. Although not related to the cause of the crash, Whip has major problems with drink and drugs and this is what the majority of the film is about. I assumed that it would explore his character and his struggle but in reality we get one sequence of his self-destructive nature after another. All of them are well acted but none of them are reflective or do anything different from the one before or the one coming up next – indeed some of them are close to celebratory in how they are delivered and I'm not sure why humor was such a part of the film. Anyway, this is really all we get and to be fair the professional nature of it and the background of the crash does mean it is quite interesting, but it never does anything of merit outside of this.
Instead of character and struggle exploration, we get a last-minute Road to Damascas and glib redemption. This feels cheap and only serves to highlight how little the film actually did with the character and the subject. The cast do what they can with it. Washington is great – shame he wasted so much on such an average film. Cheadle doesn't have too much to do but is a good presence – likewise Greenwood, Gerety, Tunie, Beauvais, Leo and the other familiar faces you'll see. The film really uses them as face though and not too much is done with them. Goodman feels totally out of place, like he has walked in from another film; I understand what his character was, but if the important thing is making his character convincing then they should make a film for that character – here what his delivery brought hurt the film – particularly when he is in the hotel room scene near the end, he adds a comedic element it didn't need. Velazquez (My Name is Earl) is used primarily for her nudity – it is totally unnecessary but I shan't pretend the film didn't get my whole attention from the very first shot because of it.
Flight starts with many attention grabbing elements – in particular the crash sequence. From here it becomes an issues film but sadly it is one that is mostly badly done. We have ongoing scenes of behavior but nothing within them to run with. It should have been so much more and Washington clearly was up to the task, but it does nothing till an obvious denouncement. It isn't a bad film, it is just a disappointing one as it gradually deflates itself and wastes the potential it all.