FLIGHT

Robert Zemeckis has finally crawled out of the mo-cap ghetto and made a film with a real living breathing cast again, headlined by Denzel Washington as a drunk pilot who saves the day.  This is a film of many contradictions.  It’s kinda preachy about quitting drinking and joining AA but it also shows that you can fly a plane, land an exploding plane, and survive a grilling at a federal hearing all while drunk.  And high on cocaine that you bought from the world’s fattest cocaine dealer played by John Goodman.

The opening sequences, featuring a day in the life of a hard-drinking hard-partying airline pilot are compelling, and the crash sequence is well directed, but then we still have over 90 minutes of.... other.  He meets a heroin addict, pisses off his ex-wife, pisses off his son, practices lying, and kinda shambles around.  I think the film would have been much stronger if Denzel could get away with it all, and it left the audience to decide how they felt about that.  He does get away with it.  Seems like a good ending.  But then it keeps going.  And he repents.

Denzel is a great actor, and its a relief to see him play a relatively normal guy.  Not a cop, or an agent, or a killer, or a great historical figure.  You can tell the difference between his levels of drunkenness (or coked-up-itude) and he does less yelling than he usually falls back on.  In fact the best shot of the movie is probably just him silently watching a plane take off through his hotel window.

You and me both, buddy.

~ The music choices in the film are strange.  They are all very well known songs that must have been expensive as shit to license, but that everybody hears on the radio a hundred times a day anyway.  Sympathy For The Devil plays whenever John Goodman shows up?  Not money well spent.