OVP: Flight (2012)

Film: Flight (2012)
Stars: Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Bruce Greenwood, Don Cheadle, John Goodman, Tamara Tunie, Brian Geraghty, Melissa Leo
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Oscar History: 2 nnominations (Best Actor-Denzel Washington, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Sorry for the crazy delay in posts-this past week has been a busy one, with family visiting in town and working some late nights, but I am back, and I've managed to fit a large amount of movies into my schedule, so we have a lot to discuss, starting with the latest film from Robert Zemeckis (his first live-action film in a decade), Flight.

(Spoilers throughout) Flight, for those unfamiliar, is one of several fall films that has been accused of having a misleading trailer, and if I recall the first trailer for the film that I saw, I would have to agree.  The film tells the tale of Whip Whitaker (Washington), an ace pilot who also happens to be addicted to alcohol and cocaine (and cigarettes, a vice that is pretty low on the spectrum, but I'm just going to point out because the man is constantly smoking).  On the morning of the flight, Captain Whitaker has been drunk from the night before, is on cocaine, and yet is still flying the plane.  We'll suspend belief on this one, because I just can't imagine that if he had been drinking, and his copilot and flight attendants had smelled that, that they wouldn't have said something right away.  Again, it's a movie, but this is a really big plot point and even though his co-pilot (Geraghty) is a rookie, that doesn't mean that he hasn't been trained to report something like an intoxicated captain, and as later scenes prove, they were all aware he was drunk.

But he doesn't report it, and the plane hits the sky, and we are treated to one of those bad omens in a film, a rocky takeoff that you think has to be the worst of the flight, only to find out that the landing will be far, far worse.  The film's best sequence, by far, is the title sequences, and this flight, a genius series of exhilarating action scenes, steals the movie.  We get to see nearly everything go wrong in the air, with the plane slowly falling apart, and Captain Whitaker, despite having just downed two small bottles of (I believe) Smirnoff in his orange juice, is able to keep control of the plane, even turning the plane upside down at one point in a move that saves a lot of lives, and then landing it in a field, just after clipping the bell tower of a church, and while Captain Whitaker is in a coma shortly after the crash, we soon learn that only six people died on the plane, though one of them is Captain Whitaker's former lover, whom he had been sleeping with the previous night.

The film then becomes something entirely different from an action film, instead focusing on Captain Whitaker's addiction, and the ensuing legal issues with having a captain who was clearly intoxicated flying a plane that crashed.  It's a weird sort of juxtaposition, and has you sort of in a moral quandary-as we find out throughout the movie, this is a plane that only Captain Whitaker could have flown to safety-all other pilots, just as ace as he and sober to boot, crashed the plane in simulations.  Therefore, he's a hero.  However, he was also drunk and high, and in a different way put the lives of the people of that plane at risk.  It's a battle of the greater good versus what is right, and it's a far more interesting pickle than the Lost Weekend-style bender that Denzel's character seems to be constantly going on, drinking and snorting his way through every single day.  I get that the crash clearly triggered something, but this is a man who has been able to hide his addictions for years, enough so that he was able to captain the plane with no issue, probably many times before, and so the fact that he completely falls by the wayside and gets so damn sloppy seems bizarre to me.

The film is littered with strong supporting players with various successes.  In one of those roles you just know was written for a specific actor, John Goodman steals every scene he's in, whether by great acting or grand theft movie (depending on whom you ask, I say a little of the former in his first scene, a little of the latter in his second), and has a bravado as Whip's drug dealer and a swagger to know he's "always on the list."  Kelly Reilly has a significant enough role as a fellow drug addict that falls in love with Whip, all-the-while trying to get sober and figure out her life herself, that you feel with a slightly more famous actor, she'd be an easy shortlister for an Academy Award nomination.  Reilly's character, though, doesn't have enough to do throughout the film, and becomes a bit too much of a saint, too quickly to be very interesting.  A lot of the film hinges on you believing that someone's world can be turned entirely upside-down by one instance, which can happen, but it doesn't happen overnight-we don't suddenly change, or at least we struggle against that change at first, and I see none of that from Washington and Reilly's characters-they play addicts well, lying and cheating themselves throughout the film, but that struggle downwards for Washington and struggle of being pulled up for Reilly just seems too weak for addicts that have wrestled with this issue for years.  It's a big miss on the part of the writer and it also allows for far more two-dimensional performances from either of the two principle actors.

I also want to point out one of the low points, script-wise, for me.  The film does a fabulous job of leading up to the Whitaker hearing, and after getting sober for a few days, Whitaker goes off the wagon in full fashion.  The film has been talking about a tough-as-nails, driven woman named Ellen Block who will run the hearing, for almost the movie's entire length, and one of Zemeckis's best moves is hiring one of the best damned actresses on the planet, Melissa Leo, to take on this small but crucial part of the film.  The problem for Leo, who nails the part's utter professionalism (clearly modeled after several successful politicians, Leo knows exactly how to moderate her tone when she's leading to something, and gets the tenor down of a high-ranking bureaucrat), is that in the scene's climax, where Whitaker confesses that he is drunk and was drunk when the plane crashed, feels so unearned.  We have seen this man lie and cheat his way through the entire movie, and when you have to narratively do a scene afterwards to explain the about-face your key character did, and the best you have is "I just couldn't tell another lie," well that is a cop out.  The man is clearly about to get away with his crime, and had such disregard for the trial that he is on cocaine and alcohol (and if previous scenes with the character are any indication, he is reveling in the fact that he's getting away with it), and yet he suddenly decides he can no longer tell a lie just under the buzzer of the film ending?  That's a weak sauce plot point, and it severely hurts anything that the film has brought forth prior to this scene.

Overall, I have to admit that I docked a star as I was writing this review based on that final scene, and though there are some highlights (the plane crash, the excellent supporting work by Leo and also Law and Order: SVU's Tamara Tunie, as well as some great moments from Denzel), I just can't recommend you board this plane.