Flight (Movie Review)

                             (2 hrs & 18 min, color, 2012)

There is something not only sad about the depiction of substance abuse on screen but in some cases something rather embarrassing about it as well.  I cringe when I see an illicit needle sink into an arm or when I have to watch some sodden soul swill down the booze to obvious excess, ad nauseam.  Would I want to witness such a scene in real life?  But I am willing to bear up under the picture of degradation I am watching, if enough sympathy (not a lot but enough) for the person or persons portrayed is generated and, more importantly, sufficient context is created to render their story palatable and morally affirmative.  As a movie buff and a dramatics enthusiast I try hard to find a basis for sympathy toward any misguided, self-destructive or disreputable character in any kind of fiction, even one with criminal tendencies, else why should I give the story my earnest attention!  The portrayal of decadence just for its own sake, however, or just for the sake of realism requires us to be captive voyeurs. 

This is not quite the case in “Flight,” a movie that concerns the downfall of a commercial airline pilot given over privately to abuse and addiction.  But it could have done a better job in the motivation department despite a solid portrayal by Denzel Washington.   The movie ends where I would have preferred it begin.  A close family member who has been estranged from him over the years asks flat out, “Who are you?”  To this he replies, “That’s a good question.”  At that the closing credits begin to scroll.  The picture ends on a note it could have sounded much earlier.  Who is this man and what circumstances have shaped him?  The sources of this flyer’s dependence upon hard drugs and drink remain rather vague. 

Something happens in the film’s first half hour that compensates somewhat but not entirely for this missing link.  He takes the passenger aircraft into the Florida skies quite boldly and manages to catch a nap with his copilot assuming command of the craft, only to be awakened when a technical failure not of his making sends the plane into a steep dive.  Against all the odds of probability he manages to bring the ship to earth in an open field with only six of the 102 people on board losing their lives.  He saves the other 96 by a most unusual feat, which I will not try to depict in words.  See the picture for yourself, though I advise that anyone with an incurable fear of flying to stay home.  This midair miracle is the movie’s most breathtaking sequence.  He is dubbed at once a hero by the media, as we would expect.  Consequently we experience great disappointment and a sinking feeling when a subsequent investigation brings his habit to light and he tumbles from the height to which he has been elevated.  A kind of sympathy derives from our living through the crisis, a sympathy based not on acquaintance with his early life but on the shameful and tragic loss he undergoes after a long career at ace piloting.  This man has been of great value and service to millions over his lifetime.  How crushing it feels to see his reputation go up in smoke!

Are alcoholics born or are they made?  Are there biological traits that make it almost inevitable that the individual will be attracted to the deadly liquid and become dependent on it or does the dependency come about through chance exposure to social and environmental influences?  I am inclined to believe the latter, but note that I am only talking about an inclination to believe it, not a one hundred percent certainty.  I will have to defer to medical science on the question, and I have never read of any consensus of opinion among these experts one way or the other.  John Gatins, the author of the original screenplay, leaves ample room for us to suppose that this pilot’s enslavement to the narcotic of booze is inherited, since his addiction predates, and leads causatively to, the collapse of his marriage and his alienation from his teen son and since no domestic factors during his childhood are ever noted or mentioned.  At least dramatically speaking the pilot’s dependency on drink is a given, not derivative.  He just is the way he is.  Of course, in all fairness, whatever an addiction’s origin, it is true that beyond a certain point it becomes self-perpetuating. 

Surely by this point in my review it should be clear to every reader that “Flight” is not in the final analysis a sky born adventure.  I suspect the “flight” of the title is more a reference to the pilot’s attempt to flee from and hide from and deny the fact of his condition.  And there is a lot of denying on his part right up until the movie’s last few tense moments.  The airline portrayed is of course fictitious, and let us hope that its internal quality control system is not typical of actual ones.  You get the impression that the entire operation is a giant accident that has been waiting to happen.  This accrues from the minutiae of the investigation that follows the crash, and as far as I can tell the technical details with regard to a commercial airliner’s construction are accurate and most informative for us lay folk.  I certainly hail the film’s educational value.

I also hail the work of Kelly Riley, playing a young woman addict in the process of getting “clean,” who succumbs momentarily to Washington’s charms before taking a hard second look at him.  It is a small role, but she soaks the screen with heart and verve.  John Goodman gives a strong salty portrayal of a supplier “friend.”  Also worth a nod are Don Cheadle as a lawyer for the airline and Bruce Greenwood as the head of the pilots’ union, both of whom have much invested in keeping the clamps on the ugly truth about their star aviator.  Robert Zemeckis (for whom “Forrest Gump” remains a shining moment) does the adequate directing. 

In a nutshell “Flight” is far from being a great production; there have been better films on the subject of substance abuse.  But it is informative and largely affective in the dramatics department, despite a mammoth implausibility at a crucial point, which I will not reveal.  To do so would ruin a significant element of suspense.  Washington’s star power gives the film a lot of heft it may not have had otherwise.  Though it is not his very best work, his fans, among whom I count myself, will not want to miss it.

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