Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenplay: John Gatins
Starring: Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman
Synopsis is here
I managed to slot a viewing of Flight before attending my now
weekly 5 a side football game.
"It's good
isn't it?" A work colleague remarked before I ran on as sub.
"It's
alright." I commented, somewhat derisively.
The game went on
and I really thought no more of the film. As I headed home, I tried to compile
my thoughts into something more comprehensive and yet even then the same
two words kept ringing in my years. Even giving myself a day to let things
ruminate did little to help. I found the film simply passable.
Passable is fine.
It's ludicrous to expect the greatest movie ever, every time you plant your
backside in an troublesome cinema seat. However, when watching Flight, my mind
was taken back to just how much I was taken by Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend
(1945) and how even now, such a film makes more of a mark. Zemeckis' film (his
first live action since 2000) pulls all the necessary strings to provide the
audience a comfortable feature and I feel that may be the issue of the film.
The film doesn't overreach or offend and with that it doesn't give any more
than it should. Considering its subject matter, I'm a
little disappointed that the film doesn't take more risk.
The film starts
well with Zemeckis utilising his effects know how to premium effect. Two
moments punctuate the opening act, a drug overdose (with a great use of
detailed CGI effects) and a terrifying plane crash which strikes just as
hard as when Zemeckis made Tom Hanks a cast away. The two scenes intersect with
each other and provide a brilliant set up to the moral conundrum that
appears afterwards. The life of Whip Whitaker (Washington), the pilot of the
crash, takes a turn for the worst as the addictions which
have plagued him through his life come to a head. Whip was drunk when
he took his role that day, but his instinct and reactions kept the fatalities
to a minimum. He is considered a hero to some, yet others know what they
saw that day before the crash.
Denzel Washington,
like Daniel Day Lewis is an actor whose control over their roles are so strong
that they are frightening. Washington elevates the films trajectory,
simply by being such a commanding performer. Witness the moments of the crash,
his voice is almost abnormally calm, yet his face says so much more.
Washington's abilities to grasp hold of so many different emotions within a
glance are what make him a performer worth watching. He is an actor that
doesn't need dialogue to convey the message; he understands the
body language and nuances of the roles he plays so well, he
embodies them.
It's Washington's
performance that makes Flight worth a watch, along aside the Zemeckis direction
of the plane crash. Everything else unfortunately is a little too obvious for its
own good. Some have taken Martin Scorsese to task for his love of the Rolling
Stones (Gimmie Shelter in three different films), however, when we see John
Goodman roll out of an elevator while Sympathy for the Devil plays, you don't
have to be Barton Fink to see where his morals lie.
The heavy
handedness of the films symbolism and metaphors combined with the straight
edged screenplay do little to enhance the heft displayed by
Washington's performance. The messy issue of addiction is as neatly
wrapped here as Wilder's then convention breaking movie back in 1945. One feels
that more could be added to Flight, but it wouldn't land itself so safely in its
comfort zone.
However, to end on
a positive note, it's great to see more of the beautiful Kelly Reilly who puts
in some great work as a heroin addicted photographer. It's also interesting to
see just how non-pulsed the film is about race in the frame. It is a film set
in Atlanta that is not white washed and is full of black faces. This said, the
film does not use race as a crutch in any form. The film
feels truly colour blind in its relationships both work and personal.
This may be just some lingering effects of a month of Lincoln and Django, but
it's an observation I felt worth mentioning.
