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Review: Flight

By Christine Petralia

Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures

November 4, 2012


For those looking for a movie just about a hero pilot who lands a plane that suddenly goes into a nose dive, this is much more.



Capt. William ‘Whip’ Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a man who enjoys his booze, drugs and woman. He wakes up one morning after a night of partying with a flight attendant Katerina Marquez (Nadine Velazquez), they both make it on time to their 9 a.m. flight to Atlanta from Orlando. After getting them through horrible storm, Whitaker makes an announcement to the passengers that it should be smooth sailing to Atlanta, all while making himself a drink. He passes out in the cockpit and lets the co-pilot man the plane. He is jolted awake when the plane suddenly goes into a nose dive.



After trying everything he can think of, he decides to roll the plane to invert it and straighten it out. While he is doing this, one flight attendant gets out of her seat and is tossed about the plane, and a child falls out of his seat. Marquez puts him back in, but doesn’t make it to her seat in time for when the plane rights itself and then crashes into a field where a church is.

When Whitaker wakes up in the hospital, he learns 96 of the 102 on board the plane survived. Of the six who were killed, two were the flight attendants. While everyone calls him a hero, it comes to light that Whitaker was under the influence of drugs and alcohol while he was flying. Even though the pilots union lawyer makes the test results go away, the NTSB continues to investigate the crash and Whitaker.



While he is in the hospital, he becomes friends with a recovering addict, Nicole (Kelly Reilly). He promises he will visit her when he gets out. He decides to stay at his father’s old farm to get away from the media. While there, he gets rid of all of the booze in the place. However, after news of the test results, he goes on a binge and decides to find Nicole. He ‘rescues’ her from her landlord and old life and lives with him on his farm. However, he sinks deeper and deeper into his addiction of alcohol. He claims he can stop at any time, but doesn’t. She ends up leaving him, as he drinks more and more when the investigation digs deeper and finds that even though there was no drink service on the flight, two vodka bottles were found in the trash.



On a promise to be sober for the upcoming NTSB hearing, Whitaker moves in with his pilots union rep. He stays clean for eight days, however, the night before the hearing, even though his hotel room is alcohol free, the adjoining room is unlocked and he clears out the mini-bar. His lawyer and rep find him unconscious and call his drug dealer to give him an upper of coke before the hearing. And just when we learn that the crash was, in fact, due to a mechanical failure, and we think that Whitaker will stay out of prison, he cracks when asked about the two vodka bottles.



What started out as a thriller, as the first 30-40 minutes are the flight itself, this movie turns into a drama about a man facing his demons. Washington does an amazing job portraying Whitaker, a man who hits rock bottom when the flight happens. He abuses drugs and alcohol and takes life for granted. Once the flight happens, it forces him to sober up and face his issues. But instead, he spirals deeper and deeper. His breaking point comes at the hearing when he realizes he can’t lie about a woman he had feelings for and let her name get tarnished after she died in the crash.



The only thing about the film I wish they had explored more was Reilly’s character as Nicole. They explored a little bit about her in the beginning and I wasn’t quite sure where they were going with it. Then she meets Whitaker and we think they will help each other get sober, and they don’t. When she leaves, we think Whitaker will realize that he keeps hurting people, but he doesn’t. I feel like there was more to Nicole’s storyline that might be on the cutting room floor. But then again, I’m not sure.

Either way, this film is a must see, even if just to see the plane crash itself, it was definitely a nail biter.

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All works created by Christine McGrath; Centereach, New York  All Rights Reserved 2024

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