I liked the actors but not the story or the script.

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2013)

I saw "Flight" last night.
It's a little disconnected.
First, the opening shots of Nadine Velasquez were sexy, cheap, and revealing about where this drama was going to go.
Second, the movie had a hell of a cast--Denzel Washington, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, all fine actors, and there was a huge cast. But where was the story? Where did that go? Though you had lots of action and drama to open, the plot hardly developed any significant and meaningful twists. And on that point, the movie crashed early on. Whip Whitaker knew he'd be railroaded by the NTSB. But that never materialized until the end, where it was revealed up front that the plane had the bolt of one of its wings destroyed. Really? That's the twist we'd all been waiting for to exonerate Whip from negligent homicide? And it took nearly the entire movie to one, present this information, and two, to present no real challenge to Whip's character as a lying, drinking, hustling pilot? The plot never really developed. Reilly's character, Nicole, was as pathetic as Whip. What, was it a case of misery loves company? I mean how many clichés can one endure? Her character goes nowhere. We see her get picked up by a sponsor from AA, but where does she go? We don't know. We're not supposed to know. It's only enough to know that she left and that somehow demonstrates an independent and full recovery from a series of train wrecks. Ah, hardly. I mean there were these subplots that were really belabored and kept the movie, "Flight," on the ground. It never got off the ground.
So what's the story about then? Is it a creative production of how a talented man comes to terms with his addiction? Is it a case of how a man learns about himself by the movie's end because his son asks, "Who are you?" From that ending to the scene before it to the larger realization where he needs cocaine to bring himself up again in front of Cheadle, Greenwood, Goodman, and Michael Beasley, we've kind of gotten the point by then that he is who he is--he's a talent pilot but a wreck of a man. But is that the story? I mean is that all to the story? No.
There's more. The story is about a skilled professional who has a private demon while serving the public. There is the line that he "violated the public's trust." According to whom? Who's trust? I mean does the public have any say so whatsoever in vetting any pilot any where? And if they did, would they know what to look for? Would they know what questions to ask? It's not public trust that Whip has violated, it's the Federal Aviation Commission who sets standards, creates licensing, and whatnot, but they love to say that it is the public's trust that he has violated. No. It's a case of government blaming the victim. Whip, too, was injured in the crash--he was a victim of it. But in order for the NTSB to shift blame and hold someone else accountable to their shoddy regulations, the lawyers and the NTSB heads have to tell us that it was the pilot who violated the public's trust as though the government has been in the act of serving the public. That's one kind of service I can do without. Whip is beholden to industry standards set by the government, and according to his remarkable skills at flying at inverted positions we learn that he has surpassed any other pilot in the same position. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is that he's a boozer. Clearly the booze did not affect his flying. That's made clear. Yet since the NTSB gets its funding from the tax-payer, it does not want to take the blame for shoddy standards but instead show the public that they have its best interest. They do not. For an added moral berating to his character, the plot includes people and visits to the AA. Always the individual's fault. Never the fault of the agency that sets the standards and regulations that serve special interest, crony-connected capitalists who are real capitalists.
I Denzel Washington. I like Goodman, particularly in Barton Fink. And I like Don Cheadle in Boogie Nights. But since then, Cheadle has had every politically correct role that one can find.
And then there are the requisite cheap shots at Christianity. Hollywood is Darwinian.
I rated this movie a 7 because I liked the actors. The script read like it was written by 10th graders.