For as terrific an actor as Denzel Washington is (and he is one of the absolute best), he makes many movies. And very often, he plays a cop or detective. As a result, some of these movies and his performances get lost in the shuffle. When I think of his performances in Unstoppable, The Taking of Pelham 123, Deja Vu, Man on Fire, and Out of Time, I think of one big blend. Outside of Man on Fire, the performances don’t stand out. And while his performance in Man on Fire is brilliant, it would have been better remembered had it not been lumped with these other, lesser, movies. With that said, his performance in Flight is one of his best performances and will be remembered for a long time.
The preview for Flight will scare enough people away from seeing this movie. If you fear flying in airplanes, this movie is not for you. From the preview, we learn that the commercial aircraft that Washington’s character (Whip Whitaker) is flying has something go wrong with it, causing it to hurl towards the ground. We learn that Whitaker saves the airplane by, among other things, inverting it so that it can level out before it touches the ground. The trailer also shows that Whitaker had alcohol in his system during the crash. In the trailer, Washington’s character doesn’t confirm or deny the accusations. Instead, he adamantly says, “There is nobody else who could have landed that plane.”
While the trailer was indeed exciting, when it was over, I couldn’t help but think that this was another confident, if not cocky, Washington saving the day as he did in Unstoppable, The Taking of Pelham 123, Deja Vu, Man on Fire, Out of Time, John Q, Book of Eli…Stop me when this sounds familiar. In all honesty, that was where my reservations about this movie lay. I was convinced he was saving an airplane just like he saved a cargo train in Unstoppable and a subway train in The Taking of Pelham 123. Unstoppable was just an action movie with enough action and adventure to earn a lot of money at the box office. I was not a fan at all. Likewise, with The Taking of Pelham 123, I thought it was a decent movie, but a movie that Denzel Washington was better than. While both films were exciting, neither seemed to challenge him as an actor. I can’t envision a scenario where I will watch either of those movies ever again.
My initial hesitations were quickly forgotten within the first 10 minutes of the movie and entirely erased after the first 30 minutes. Washington’s performance is one for the ages. I don’t want to give too much away here. After seeing the movie, I read Roger Ebert’s review and was very thankful I didn’t read it beforehand. He gave away everything about Washington’s performance in his review. Washington’s Whip is a highly complex character who you will find yourself liking one minute and loathing the next. There are parts of Robert Zemeckis’s Flight that I found utterly maddening. It was purposeful, and you feel better about some of those things as the movie progresses. But when some of these events occur, you can only ask why.
It’s a powerful movie, and I’m not doing justice to the story (on purpose). I might add a spoiler alert later, but I went into the film without reading any spoiler reviews. I encourage you to do the same. I also encourage you to see this movie. This was the first movie I’ve attended in a while, with applause at the end. I wasn’t part of that because that’s not what I do, but I exited the moving thinking I had seen not my favorite movie of the season, but the one that was the most real and did due diligence in telling a great story in the best way it could.
There were also great performances by Don Cheadle as Whip’s criminal attorney (Hotel Rwanda, Traitor), John Goodman (The Big Lebowski, Babe), Kelly Reilly (Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows), and Bruce Greenwood (Below, Super 8) as Whip’s union representative and loyal friend). I’ll leave out the roles of Goodman and Reilly as to continue to eliminate any potential spoilers.
See this movie in the theater, especially if you are a Denzel fan.
Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 10/10 (Denzel’s performance is comparable to Training Day, American Gangster, and Remember The Titans)
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 10/10
Screenplay 7.5/10 (there are some holes in terms of how many days we go between scenes, how Whip can stay out of the spotlight as easily as he does, and how easily he becomes romantically involved with Reilly’s Nicole so quickly)
Directing 8.5/10 (my faults with issues with the screenplay could have been better addressed by Zemeckis, in my opinion)
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 6.5/10 (the songs that appear on the soundtrack didn’t match, in my opinion, the movie’s theme. Often, the songs were light-hearted and fun. I wouldn’t say I liked that.)
Hook and Reel 10/10 (undoubtedly successful here)
Universal Relevance 8/10 (much more relevant in the last few years than it would have been before that)
84.5%
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