People who have grown up with filmmaker Robert Zemeckis' movies arguably know him best for either his Back to the Future trilogy or his Oscar-winning film Forrest Gump. Younger audiences may know him best for his motion-capture animated films like The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol. As someone who belongs to the first group and whose kids belong to the second, I was somewhat stunned by Zemeckis' latest film, Flight, starring Denzel Washington, which marks his first return to live-action filmmaking since he filmed Tom Hanks and a Volleyball in the 2000 smash hit Cast Away.
Flight is the story of veteran airline pilot William "Whip" Whitaker (Washington), an alcoholic who manages to conceal his addiction from his colleagues until, on a flight from Orlando to Atlanta, the plane he is piloting breaks down in mid-flight and he is forced to crash land it. His feat of crash-landing the stricken plane is no less than miraculous, but of the 102 people on board, six die, while Whitaker and the survivors land in the hospital. Whitaker wakes up to learn he is being hailed as a hero for his actions, but it is not long before he learns that, due to alcohol content of his blood, which was drawn from him immediately after the crash, he is now under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for criminal negligence. Fortunately, Whitaker has in his corner his good friend Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) who also happens to be the current pilot's union representative, and hot-shot attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle), both of whom work overtime to shift the focus of the investigators to what they are certain were flaws in the aircraft. In the meantime, Whitaker has to keep a low profile, and while doing so he finds succor in the embrace of Nicole (Kelly Reilly) a drug addict he meets while recovering at the hospital whose struggle with drugs mirrors his struggle with alcohol, although unlike Whitaker, Nicole knows she has a problem and is determined to do something about it. As the date for the NTSB hearing draws nearer, Whitaker grapples with his addiction and the threat of having his entire life unravel.
Denzel Washington, widely regarded as Hollywood royalty, has made a career out of playing many kinds of characters, but for all of his efforts to show his range he has tended to gravitate towards nobler characters, as shown by his portrayals in films like Crimson Tide, The Hurricane, Remember the Titans, The Inside Man, The Book of Eli and Unstoppable. Even when he played characters who weren't necessarily sympathetic, like corrupt police officer Alonso Harris in Training Day or real-life drug dealer Frank Lucas in American Gangster, Washington seemed to imbue them with a nobility that arose from their utter conviction in what it was they did. Fine performances, sure, but there was, to my mind at least, the slightest edge missing.
That has changed with this picture. Whip Whitaker is, to my mind, hands-down the most agonizingly complex, thoroughly messed-up character Washington has played to date, and if any doubt lingers as to this man's capacity to turn in a truly bravura performance, this film completely and irrevocably erases it. Whitaker's journey is an absolutely gut-wrenching experience and it is Washington who makes it so. Washington played a man grappling with alcohol abuse before, in the military drama Courage Under Fire, but what he did there pales in comparison to his work here. This is, to my mind, the performance of a lifetime, and I think Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins should be proud to have extracted this out of an actor who, all things considered, really did not have anything left to prove.
Though he certainly didn't need the help, Washington is ably abetted by a solid supporting cast, with Reilly's Nicole in particular providing a striking foil to his addict in denial with her addict seeking redemption. This little-known British actress who was most recently seen by mainstream audiences as John Watson's wife in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movies turns in a wonderfully understated but deeply moving portrayal of a woman driven to addiction by her loneliness and who desperately wants to find her way back from the ledge. In Whitaker she finds the comfort and affection she seeks, but she struggles when she sees him refusing to come to terms with his own problem. It really says something that she manages to hold her own against an actor who is giving the performance of his career. Greenwood and Cheadle, certainly no acting lightweights, certainly make their presence felt, as do John Goodman as Whitaker's buddy and drug dealer Harling Mays and Melissa Leo in a very brief turn as NTSB investigator Ellen Block, but this film truly belongs to Washington.
Zemeckis is an old hand at extracting excellence from his actors; he helped Tom Hanks get his second consecutive Oscar for Forrest Gump and even managed to snag him a nomination for Cast Away, so it's not necessarily a surprise that this director knows how to get the very best from his performers. This film, however, is a marked departure from the fairy-tale-like buoyancy of Gump and the comparatively lighter tone of Cast Away; the power of the performances is such that characters like Whitaker and Nicole feel like raw, open wounds, wounds which can make audience members like me wince.
This film is quite unlike anything audiences have ever seen from director Robert Zemeckis or star Denzel Washington, but as far as I'm concerned,if people want to see some of the finest work either of those two has ever put on the screen, they would do well to watch this movie.
5/5
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