Crash and Burn! My Review of Flight

Oh wow! Wow! Those were the words in my head as I watched veteran film maker Robert Zemeckis’ Flight. Flight starring two time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, tells the story of Captain William "Whip" Whitaker, an alcoholic and recreational druggie, who successfully crash lands a passenger jet while under the influence of drugs and booze. Whip saves 96 out of the 102 passengers and crew members on board. Unfortunately, one of the dead is his flight attendant and occasional girlfriend, Katerina Marquez (Nadine Velasquez), who had been out partying with him the previous night.

The film follows the subsequent investigation into the remote and immediate causes of the plane crash and the heroics of Whip Whitaker whose unconventional method of flying the plane upside brought it out of its nose dive; a move which undoubtedly saved the 96 lives. Hired by the airline to control the situation are Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) an old friend of Whip’s, and lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle). This is a tough task as the toxicology report on Whip shows that he was intoxicated at the point of the crash. However, Hugh uses his skills to quash the report and assures that it would not see the light of day. With a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) a few days away, he approaches his co-pilot for the day Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty) and regular attendant on his flights, Margaret Thomason (Tamara Tunie) and coerces them to testify that that the SouthJet flight 227 was just like “any ordinary day”. They agree.

Whip retreats from the spotlight and befriends Nicole (Kelly Reilly) an addict he meets at the hospital. Now while they try to draw strength from each other on the road to the recovery, Whip slips back into his ways as he finds it hard to deal with the attention, the pressure from the media, his lawyers, the airline and his ex-wife’s refusal to let him see his son. Before long, Nicole abandons him telling him that his refusal to get better is not good for her own recovery. He hits rock bottom and has to move in with Charlie so as to stay clean into the hearing. However, the night before the hearing, having been checked into a locked and mini-bar-free hotel room, he takes advantage of an unlocked door to an adjoining room and proceeds to empty its mini-bar. The next morning Charlie and Hugh are furious when they find him drunk with the hearing an hour away. Harling Mays drug dealer and friend of Whip’s, played by John Goodman is called in. He brings some cocaine which straightens Whip out in time for the hearing.

At the hearing he scales through all the questions asked by lead investigator Ellen Block (Melissa Leo). It is revealed that the plane crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction. Whip is in fact praised for his heroics echoing the sentiments of the media. Ms. Block asks a final question as to the presence of two empty bottles of vodka found in the crashed plane. The presence of the bottles is contentious as Whip had ordered that drinks not be served during the flight due to turbulence. And since Katerina’s report was the only one that showed alcohol in her bloodstream, Ms. Block asks Whip if he thinks Katerina may have been intoxicated at the time of the crash. Whip replies in the negative admitting that he was the one that drank the vodka (which was true), that he was intoxicated at the time of the crash and that he was currently intoxicated. The hearing erupts with an angered Hugh and Charlie. Whip gets convicted of manslaughter and serves a five year sentence.

Phew! I just had to write that long plot synopsis to sort of help put the rest of the review in perspective. Flight is one powerful film, one that would have been talked about for days if it had come out in the 80s or 90s - a classic. But in today’s film terrain is it so easy for a film like Flight to get lost in the crowd. Acting was very good all around. There was no over-acting as the STORY was the star of the film. However, Denzel Washington’s performance was painfully convincing bearing in mind that we could only see the outsides of who the man Whip was. Can anyone really adequately evince the internal conflict that Whip was going through? I sense this was deliberate by director Zemeckis (Back to the Future I-III, Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol) and writer John Gatlins (Coach Carter, Real Steel).

A hero to many, a damaged person to himself and those who knew him, Whip Whitaker was a bit of an anti-hero. I found myself not caring whether or not he was drunk, crunk or freaking asleep!  He did save 96 lives! He saved 96 lives when everyone could have died! The mechanical fault was not his, he was in control and he executed a move he probably would not have thought of had he been sober. This was confirmed when simulations of his flying the plane upside down by other pilots all ended in crashes.

But the truth was that Whip was an addict; the kind of drunk and junkie that laymen would not recognize  his type required a trained eye. Whip was also a survivor: he had survived his childhood, his failed marriage and was trying to survive his condition when the plane crashed. Heck he was even trying to survive the investigation! But he was doing that in the wrong place. The scene where he goes around the farm house removing stashes of beer and bottles of alcohol had me with my mouth open. Dude was an alcoholic! Booze was within easy reach in EVERY room of the house!

Whip was shown sometimes winning the fight against his addiction but always eventually giving in to it. Even Nicole’s presence could not help him as he threatened to drag her down too. The hotel room scene where he opens the mini-bar and sees what could best be described as a “drunkard’s heaven” was classic. He opens the mini-bar, and slowly takes in its contents. He picks up and fingers a miniature bottle of vodka, opens it and inhales the all too familiar essence. With each movement taking him a step closer to yielding into temptation, he seems to finally win the battle by screwing the cap on tight and placing the bottle on the closed table top and walking away. The optimists among us are all about to cheer but alas, in a brilliant twist he reaches out to grab the bottle. Even the cynics are a little sad.

Consequently, Flight is a story about addiction and what is sometimes required to end it – a big ass stage! For Whip he had coasted on a drug and alcoholic wave and would have coasted into the books as a hero but just at the last minute, just as he could have put the issue behind him forever, he spills his guts. What is remarkable is that he could have done it privately, in rehab or even at Nicole’s AA meeting where no one would have judged him. But at the risk of tarnishing a defenceless Katerina’s memory, he instead chose to spill at the one place where everyone was sure to hear. Ms. Block gave him two outs and he opted for the significantly more painful one, but one that would save him. He must have feared that if he missed this chance to repent, he would not have gotten another. Flight shows us that sorting ourselves out is most times a very painful process; we have to be willing to fight our very nature or the person that we have become. We can lie to everyone, gloss over our lives but in the end we cannot really lie to ourselves.

I liked Flight a lot. It was a good story where you do not know whether to root for Denzel Washington’s Whip or not. In the end you seat back and hope that the right thing is done. In the end, it is.