Welcome back Bob!!
The man who has given us some modern day classics as “Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” has made his first live action film in twelve years. Since the year 2000, director Robert Zemeckis has been solely focused on making cartoons that want to desperately look exactly like the real world. “The Polar Express,” “Beowulf” and “A Christmas Carol” were all animated films that featured photo realistic scenery and, if you squinted your eyes, you would swear that you were watching Angelina Jolie traipse around naked in a vat of molten gold. I always wondered what the point was to spend millions of dollars cobbling together a realistic looking room in a computer with fake Jim Carrey sitting at a fake table when you could just shoot a real room with the real Jim Carrey sitting at a real table. This would save everyone some time and make for a far less creepy movie.
With “Flight,” Zemeckis proves that the time off has made him a touch rusty after spending so much time on the Grid. A story of morality and redemption, “Flight” features some heavy material that is treated far too lightly.
Pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a broken mess of a person. He is a heavy drinker that likes to use cocaine to break from the haze after he’s ingested a gallon of vodka. Probably not the person you want guiding your life through the clouds 7 miles above the surface of the planet. On a short flight from Florida to Atlanta, Whip’s plane suffers a serious malfunction and begins to nose dive to the ground. Whip pulls off a miracle landing involving much screaming and flipping the plane upside-down. Luckily our hero is a functioning alcoholic. But there is the film’s dilemma: No one else could have landed that plane but Whip did it drunk.
“Flight” is a character piece that mainly focuses on Whip’s struggle with his disease. It could have easily been called “Grounded” as Whip is forced to face these demons. Denzel does his standard concrete performance but it is a touch too neat, too tidy. Having watched Joaquin Phoenix deliver such a tortured drunk with Freddie Quell in “The Master,” Whip seems almost made-for-television clean. With his pedigree, Washington might get the nominations, but he shouldn’t win.
There are a couple of Zemeckis signatures here. While he has mellowed on the constantly sweeping camera, “Flight” features a constant stream of classic rock that could have made up Vol. 3 in the “Forrest Gump” Soundtrack collection. It’s an odd fit that only reminds us that Zemeckis loves this music. Also the pop-auteur sure knows how to crash a plane. With the one showstopper in “Castaway” coupled with the scene found in “Flight” it is easy to guess that he may suffer from an acute form of travel anxiety that we get to witness him work through on the big screen. After the breath stealing first act, “Flight” settles into comfortable pace that tries to hammer home Whip’s dysfunction. Zemeckis makes much of this material too dry to care much about. Whip drinks, knows he shouldn’t, then drinks again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The material is incredibly mishandled when it is played for laughs late in the film. After a bender, Whip’s dealer is called upon. Played with great gusto by John Goodman (who may be fighting himself for a supporting nom with his work here and in “Argo”), the dealer barrels into the room with some coke and proceeds to get Whip high so that he can be presentable. My crowd was in stitches as Goodman sells the scene perfectly. But should we be laughing? The film spends too much time establishing Whip’s destroyed world and to have us chuckle at him while he continues sickness is a major misstep. That is when “Flight” loses whatever gravity it could ever muster. It’s also a mistake that Zemeckis probably wouldn’t have made 12 years ago.