Up and down

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2014)

I'll try to avoid aviation clichés in this review but it will be tough. Denzel Washington was rightly Oscar-nominated for his leading role (indeed, he's almost never off the screen) as a troubled airline pilot with a broken-down marriage and pretty much broken-down life with an addiction to drugs, alcohol and sex as the first five minutes alone make clear. Still hungover on drink and drugs he pulls off a miraculous flight manoeuvre to save dozens of lives (although not all of them) when the plane he's flying almost literally falls apart on him in stormy weather.
Despite his heroics, his physical state in the cockpit becomes obvious to incident investigators who then seek to try him for dereliction of duty whereupon he escapes to a remote bolt-hole, bumping into drug addict Kelly Carey with whom he strikes up a tempestuous relationship which takes them both further down until reality bites giving them both a shot at redemption.
For me, the film peters out after the dramatic scene-setting plane crash, itself a wonder of special effects. I didn't buy into his relationship with poor-white-trash Carey and felt his own struggles with his demons were overplayed. That and his character's name being "Whip" Whitmore! Sentimentality is thankfully shunted pretty much out of the way but there's nothing edifying in seeing Washington's character go to the dogs. He's not very likable from the start and by the time he reaches his epiphany in the courtroom, it's too late to start caring anyway.
This is more serious stuff than I'm used to seeing from "Back To The Future" director Zemecks and he does reasonably well with it. Besides the crash scene, there are other memorable scenes including one in the opening minutes when Washington comes dramatically to life after snorting cocaine.
In the end though the movie tails off into melodrama and never regains altitude thereafter, the use of which clichés tells me to wrap up this review before I introduce a squadron's worth.