Denzel Washington stars in this top rate thriller about an airline pilot who becomes a hero after saving his passengers in a miraculous crash landing, but then falls into legal jeopardy when alcohol is found in his blood. The plane crash is thrilling, but the high stakes suspense in the final 90 minutes is about whether he can get his drinking under control. (The trailer below overemphasizes the plane crash and paints Flight as an action movie, thereby qualifying it for my list of Most Misleading Trailers.)
What makes Flight singular is that the hero can take control of a crisis at 35,000 feet and rise to superhuman performance, but is completely out of control when he spots a mini bottle of Ketel One.
And what a hero Denzel Washington makes! The guy is among our very best actors, and here, his edginess and bluster mask the pilot’s achingly vulnerable loneliness and self-loathing. And the charisma and confidence in Denzel’s screen presence makes him totally credible as an action hero.
Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) delivers a plane crash scene for the ages, and he does an excellent job of keeping up the suspense. Flight is pedal-to-the-metal intensity until the final ten minutes, when the ending didn’t quite work for me. For me, only the ending kept Flight from being a Must See and one of the year’s best; however, The Wife and several of my friends did like the ending.
The English actress Kelly Reilly is really, really good as a trashy southern heroin addict whose life intersects with the pilot’s, and who must make the same choice between recovery and demise. John Goodman is hilarious as a gonzo enabler right out of Hunter S. Thompson. The rest of the cast shines, too, especially Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Tamara Tunie.
Flight is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from many VOD outlets.