Not Very Intoxicating

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2013)

I thought this film was going to be about the moral issue of drunk pilot saves the day, so is he a hero or not? But it wasn't. It's about alcoholism and how it will destroy your life. The flight part of it is just meant to be some kind of metaphor for the need to flee, escape, to fly away from your problems, I guess. Just as drugs are, or religion being used as an excuse of what happened.
In a way that's the thing that this film said to me, whatever your fix, alcohol, heroin, God, we all have our own fanatic way of dealing with stuff in life. But it's not very interestingly shown.
I found it quite a disappointing but well made Hollywood take on alcoholism. I think they could have done more with it but chose to really hammer you down with the alcoholism story until you felt fed up with it (a bit condescending) about three quarters into the film. A repeating pattern of promises and disappointments by the lead character that becomes quite boring almost.
Denzel Washington does a great job, but even he can't save the film.
And then there is the end, in a typical Hollywood way, I felt numb and wondering, why I had to watch this.