A Matter of Responsibility...

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2019)

"Flight" is one of these experiences so intense and dramatic that you wish the movie to be over soon while not getting enough of it in the same time, like the immediate effect on some invigorating drug.
Denzel Washington is "Whip" Withaker, an experienced and respected pilot but also an alcoholic man who depends on cocaine-boosts to get back on the track. The first contradiction he embodies is how he's in total control of himself and fully confident about his skills while his whole life is a wreck, to say the least. He's divorced, hardly sees his son, doesn't even bother calling, definitely no father of the year material, and he's a party animal enjoying the side pleasures of his professions, including sleepovers in luxurious hotels with the sexiest flight attendant.
When we first see him, he's lying around on a bed, visibly hung-over, while his night playmate gets up, in all frontal nudity and puts on a sexy G-string, there's something sleazy about this man and yet when he pulls on his sunglasses and uniform, we're reminded that it takes a lot to make Denzel Washington 'pathetic', he looks like the man of the job. He might be a prick, but he sure is a pro. And so the film embarks us to its most gripping part and what must be one of the most spectacular crashing sequences ever, the one I feared the most as someone who took the bus the last couple of years, dreading the take-off and turbulences more than anything in the world.
Right now, I'm ready to kill three days of my next holiday to travel by bus just to avoid a few minutes of turbulence. "Planes are safer than road transportations" say everybody, well, I give a chance to the road anyway. I'm not mentioning my personal phobia to make myself interesting but to highlight how the crash part operated in my mind and body. I was shaking like the passengers; I could sense the nervousness of the co-pilot each time Whip was acting weird. And like many people who fear flying, I'm drawn into crash stories and I couldn't get my eyes off the screen during the take-off and "landing" sequence, one where Whip assembled all his skills to allow the plan to slide on the ground while a few minutes earlier, it was simply nose-diving.
I expected some investigation-thriller whose climax would be in the reveal that Whip's condition didn't cause the crash or maybe a more slowly-driven study in guilt and trauma with Whip trying to make amends for his actions. When we see him throwing all his alcohol and drugs and getting sober in the trashcan, I was kind of disappointed to see that 'persona' leaving, I felt I didn't get enough of the real Whip, but it takes Whip a lot more to change, especially since the investigations' result come off quite early. It's a mechanical malfunction in the gear that didn't get repaired and caused the nosedive and if it wasn't for Whip's instinctive decision to cancel the fall by turning the plane upside down, a move that required three actions from Whip, the co-pilot and the chief flight attendant and a lot of guts and self-control, the plane would have crashed and killed 102 souls. As a matter of fact, ten pilots tried to prevent the same crash on simulator tests, all have failed.
Whip is the hero of the day, saving all but six people, including two flight attendants, one of them he got up with in that fateful day and who, he doesn't know it then, might work as a cover for the investigation on Whip's intoxication during the flight. The irony in Whip's state is that it didn't cause the mechanical problem, and might have given enough resistance to the pressure to bring out the best of him, it either had a positive effect or no effect whatsoever with Whip simply being an ace pilot. But it's not about responsibilities but about principles. The whole film doesn't involve the investigation but Whip's own introspection, just because he's not guilty, and he's not, doesn't make him any less accountable for his actions.
He could dodge criticism while he had a job but after the disaster, he couldn't prevent the convergence of his professional and private life and it's ironic that till the end, he could maintain a cool façade, being hailed as a hero while destroying himself with booze. The second act is a character study of self-questioning and the aspects of our persona we refuse to confront because they undermine our path to success, how far we can go by disdaining the values we should proudly stand for. It doesn't do that with patronizing speeches or heavy sentiment but under the psychological endurance of Whip, who seems full or resentment but resists and vents his anger on his ex-wife, his son and Nicole (Kelly Reilly) drug-addict with enough guts to fight her inner demons and empathy to help her lover... Whip insists that drinking is his choice, he's got nothing to blame himself for and that goes until he's driven to the one extreme that could compromise his self-esteem, when he must answer for one little action during that ill-fated flight.
And when it does happen, we finally see the edifice crash, and not through tear-jerking artifices because Washington is such a charismatic presence he doesn't need that. His character is a rock of man who seems to resist the eroding effect of his own insecurities, until he found out that admitting your weaknesses is the liberating force and the ending couldn't have been more satisfying.
Robert Zemeckis is back at form with this "Flight", honorable mention to Don Cheadle as a sleazy lawyer capable to toy with the bureaucratic intricacies to save a client he actually hates, and John Goodman as a fixer that gives a little edge to the film. Not that the film needed any.