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Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2013)

The first 45 minutes of "Flight" are breathtakingly good. Sure, the opening scene might have been exhibit A in Jennifer Jason Leigh's reasonable assertion that women are there (in movies)to make the stars look heterosexual. But then the film takes off (pun utterly intended) and those thoughts are lost in the appreciation for the artistry on show, as are the thoughts that questioned a modern airliner's ability to survive inversion. Did you see the TU144 accident at the Paris airshow? And then we reach the (Samuel)Becket-like scene in the hospital stairwell and you're wondering why this film didn't make history. The answer comes quickly as we watch Denzel Washington descend into a cartoon character of an addict and stay there for the next ninety minutes. Hollywood (and America) will probably never get over its obsessions with addiction and redemption but everyone needs to find a new way of expressing it. The final scene in which Denzel tells a group of fellow-inmates that being banged up for ten years is the best thing that could have happened to him is beyond ridiculous. The sad thing is that there was a great film to be had here. The exploration of the tension between the various vested interests after an air crash as well as the real moral dilemmas posed were touched on but never explored. Business as usual for mainstream Hollywood. Shame on you all.