The first twenty five minutes are terrific but the movie falls flat after that.

Rating: 5/10 (27 October 2013)

After a brief start in which we see Whip (Denzel Washington) and a female partner drink and indulge in drugs for breakfast, Whip takes off into the skies towards Atlanta. While the plane is flying Whip enjoys a nice relaxing screwdriver but then something goes wrong. The plane malfunctions and starts to fail. A few people die because of the dire circumstances while Whip tries to steady the plane, even resorting to turning and flying it upside down. The crazy thing is about that move, and the movie Flight itself, is that idea works. Whip saves everyone and the scene is outstanding and breathtaking to watch. These first twenty five minutes are terrific but the movie falls flat after that.
Denzel Washington as the lead gives a very good performance as Captain Whip Whitaker, well he does the best he can. Flight was doomed from the start because the script is horrible. There is nothing new presented about addicts or alcoholics that one would not have seen in a film like Ray (a better but similar film) or Leaving Las Vegas (which is incredible). All the best scenes in Flight are within the first hour and the movie only becomes a more stale addiction drama after that. Kelly Reilly again does an above average job with a character where there is nothing for the audience to hold onto. James Badge Dale on the other hand steals one scene, with Nicole (Reily) and Whip, playing a cancer patient who is destined to day any day. Dale bursts off the screen in this short scene that has almost nothing to it, but that is what the movie needed more of. The other supporting parts bring nothing positive to the film, including a over praised John Goodman playing a cursing drug dealer, so while watching the film all I could hold onto was the crash scene and the work Dale brought to the film.
After Whip goes on with his daily life surviving a plane crash we never get a sense of danger or death from his addiction, the opposite is actually true. He is at his best when his high and nothing says that more than the plane crash scene. Why would we want this man who saved over one hundred lives to break his addiction and become someone else. His co-pilot did not know what he was doing and would have killed them all, but whether drunk or high Whip rules the air and through the film is viewed as generally nicer, funnier and better off when he is high. In a pivotal scene later in the film, director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back to the Future) holds the camera so long on an object the whole audience knows Whip wants it. If you catch the film on cable watch it until the plane crashes, or maybe even until James Badge Dale shows up if you can last that long, but if you stay all the way till the end it only gets more worse and more stale.