Flying upside down cannot possibly help you, even if you're Denzel Washington.

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2013)

When his plane malfunctions, airline pilot Whip Whitaker remarkably, no, miraculously, pulls the plane out of a nosedive by inverting it and then landing it in a field saving the lives of all but a few of those on board. He wakes up in hospital a national hero only for it all to go spectacularly pear-shaped. Whip, you see, is a drunk with a rather large snowdrift stuffed up each nostril.
Contrary to the opinions of many, based on comments splattered on certain chat rooms and networking sites, Flight is emphatically not based on true events. In the words of John Goglia, National Transportation Safety Board member, "Flying upside down cannot possibly help you", even if you're Denzel Washington.
Got that? Flight is not real, your pilot is not drunk and pilots don't generally snort cocaine.
What Flight is, however, is a very entertaining film. It isn't action-packed, it spends very little time on the crash in question and it gives us the opportunity to enjoy Washington in a rare unpleasant anti-hero role. He wrestles with, and loses to, his daemons while splattering his screwed up life across the screen. Whip is a man who should have everything but has shoved half up it up his nose and flushed the rest down the toilet.
The talent of Washington is that he allows us to like and root for Whip for the first third of the film. We watch enthralled and hopeful that somehow he'll be vindicated but slowly he unravels his internal tangle for us to see what a mess he really is. As the film progresses, he becomes ever more desperate as he sinks further into the quagmire of his own making and resorts to emotional blackmailing those who care about him most. It is both a tragic sight to witness and a marvelous performance from one of Hollywood's favourite stars.
But Flight isn't Washington's film alone. We are gifted a double whammy of eye-catching cameos from John Goodman (as Harling Mays, Whip's dealer, who munches the scenery in a bigger version of the character we've seen frequently) and Don Cheedle (as Hugh Lang, the defence attorney who could be working for the prosecution).
Beyond them is a solid supporting cast of colleagues, union reps and family that includes sterling turns from the likes of Brice Greenwood and Tamara Tunie in particular. But by far the stand-out is Kelly Reilly as Nicole, a heroin addict Whip meets on the hospital stairwell and is drawn to only to absorb into his maelstrom.
Reilly, so often doomed to playing bit-part in big flick (Sherlock Holmes) or principal in unseen gem (the fantastically chilling Eden Lake), is finally given a significant role in a big film and is every bit the equal of star name, Washington. Whilst Nicole's development may be a little too quick to be plausible, that is the fault of script and director (Robert Zemeckis) and we root for her. We want her to survive her own sickness and attachment to Whip and Reilly gives us a beautifully played character that gets under our skin. With three more films in the can or shooting, let's hope Hollywood finally catches up. And if it doesn't, at least we'll have the promise of her teaming with Brendan Gleeson in Calvary, from The Guard's John Michael McDonagh, to look forward to.
After the brace of turkeys (A Christmas Carol and Beowulf) and the ill-fated Yellow Submarine remake, Zemickis is back on solid ground and closer to the form he showed when he gave us Cast Away thirteen years ago. It is a brave move to eschew a crowd-pleasing 30-minute action sequence and instead focus quickly on the drama of character clashes instead and Flight is a richer film and far more worthwhile viewing experience for it.
Zemeckis handles his cast carefully to draw out sensitive performances from each of them, a little ham from Goodman aside, and directs the digital flight and crash sequences with panache so they are exciting and gasp-inducing without being gratuitous or flippant. He is also wise enough to keep them to a minimum to ensure we 'buy into' Flight not for the effects but for the performances.
Mid-way through, Hugh Lang tells Whip, "The FAA and the NTSB took ten pilots, placed them in simulators, recreated the events that led to this plane falling out of the sky. Do you know how many of them were able to safely land the planes? Not one. Every pilot crashed the aircraft, killed everybody on board. You were the only one who could do it!" It's a fine moment when we understand the brilliance of Whip beyond his addiction. And it matters not a jot that neither he nor the other ten pilots really exist!
For more reviews from The Squiss, subscribe to my blog and like the Facebook page.