Washington in Flight.

Denzel Washington is such a sturdy, reliable actor that his name on the screen has become synonymous with that of hero (with the obvious exception of Training Day). So it’s hard to buy him as a doped-up, alcoholic heel in Flight, an edgy thriller about the responsibility—and inherent culpability—of commercial pilots entrusted with the lives of millions.  I’d place my trust in Denzel in the cockpit any old day while humming “Fly Me to the Moon” at the same time. So it’s not easy to accept him as one of the irresponsible jerks who dangle their passengers in harm’s way. You just sort of trust him to do the right thing, and when he finally does, after more than two hours of soul-searching and moral hand-wringing, you might, like me, have double trouble with plausibility. So I have some minor problems with Flight. But don’t let that deter you. It’s the first film in over a decade by director Robert Zemeckis that guarantees originality, tempo and thrills. You go away satisfied and up to your eyeballs in entertainment. 

Mr. Washington plays Captain Whip Whitaker. He’s a seasoned, charismatic ace with a lot of wings on his uniform. But on the ground, he’s a deeply conflicted catastrophe, with an ex-wife who avoids him like a virus, a son who hates him, and a serious booze and drug problem. He’s also a womanizer with attitude issues, committed to nothing and nobody, who breaks every rule in the pilot’s manual. Snorting coke at dawn after a wild night in bed with a sexy flight attendant, he heads for the airport in pouring rain, stoned to the fins, and boards a 9 a.m. flight from Orlando to Atlanta with 102 passengers onboard. Arrogant enough to think he can outsmart severe turbulence, he ignores the 30-knot winds outside as well as the nervous shakes of his young co-pilot (the always excellent Brian Geraghty), the impaired abilities of Katerina (Nadine Velazquez), the flight attendant he just spent the night with, and the concerned, watchful eyes of senior flight attendant and old family friend Margaret Thomason (Tamara Tunie of TV’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit). The hydraulic system crashes, the two pilots lose vertical control and the plane plummets in an uncontrolled dive that leaves the passengers screaming in terror. The first 20 minutes of Flight, short-wired for combustion, is one of the hairiest nonstop action sequences ever filmed, proving that in the 12 years since Cast Away, Mr. Zemeckis has forgotten nothing about how to stage the kind of breathtaking live-action fireworks display that keeps an audience paralyzed.

Miraculously, with skill and luck, Mr. Washington heads for an abandoned field and crash-lands in an ear-splitting explosion of fire and metal with 96 survivors. Although his girlfriend is one of the casualties and his co-pilot is crippled for life, the mantle of heroism bestowed on him is worthy of a ticker-tape parade. But before he’s even out of the hospital, the first person he calls is his pony-tailed, overweight hippie drug dealer (an amusing performance by John Goodman), who smuggles in cigarettes, vodka and porn. He may be declared a public hero, but the errant knight’s troubles are just beginning. A crafty airline lawyer for the pilot’s union (Don Cheadle) who specializes in investigating pilot errors sniffs out evidence of criminal negligence, the toxicology report from the hospital blood tests shows alarmingly high alcohol and cocaine levels that could lead to lawsuits against the airline, and despite his bravery, Captain Whitaker faces life in prison on multiple counts of manslaughter. The rest of the movie is about the efforts of his friends and colleagues to help him beat the rap and save his career, his efforts to go straight, and his subsequent self-destruction. And in a subsidiary subplot, he moves to his grandfather’s deserted farmhouse in rural Georgia with a beautiful heroin addict (Kelly Reilly) who tries to rehabilitate him. Every character has a moral ambiguity that keeps the balls in the air, including the exemplary Melissa Leo as the prosecuting attorney who, like all of the others, is not above complicity.

In less capable hands, Flight would undoubtedly seem like a series of rehashed themes from other movies. But the high level of craftsmanship from the fine cast and crew—particularly Mr. Zemeckis’s slick and controlled direction, and the nuanced details and tonal shifts in a terrific screenplay by John Gatins that is both carefully researched and extremely clear—all add up to unexpected levels of sophistication. Certainly Denzel Washington’s charm and unimpeachable sense of decency help the viewer sympathize with an otherwise flawed character who—let’s be honest—is basically little more than a despicable and delusional lout. (One can only wonder what a different movie it would have been with an edgier actor like Robert Mitchum or Burt Lancaster in the role.)

My biggest problem with Flight is not the unanswered questions it raises, but the eleventh-hour epiphany just in time for a happy ending. Maybe I’m naturally cynical, but I simply don’t believe that people are basically good at heart—and I don’t buy into sudden salvation. Otherwise, Flight is one hell of an entertainment.

rreed@observer.com

FLIGHT

Running Time 138 minutes

Written by John Gatins

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Starring Nadine Velazquez, Denzel Washington and Carter Cabassa

3/4

Jane, Lowe and Piven.

Grown men behaving badly are everywhere on film, but a more stomach-turning band of incompetent losers has never been assembled than the scumbags in the stupidly titled I Melt With You. Four obnoxious human brussels sprouts get together annually for a week of debauchery and self-destruction in a rented beach house in California’s majestic Big Sur.Richard (Thomas Jane, from the TV series Hung), the alpha-male group leader, is a failed novelist who teaches high school English to make ends meet. Jonathan (Rob Lowe, who also ill-advisedly produced this nasty waste of time) is an addicted doctor in the middle of an ugly divorce who prescribes illegal drugs for rich female patients and brings along a bagful of uppers, downers and pills for every mood to keep his buddies stoned. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is a money marketer under investigation by the authorities. Tim (Christian McKay) is the birthday boy who turns out to be gay and terminally depressed over the death of his boyfriend in an automobile crash. Fortified by hard liquor, blaring acid rock and an endless supply of cocaine, these lost and rudderless guy pals talk about the wives they’ve cheated on, the children they’ve ignored, losing their hair, impotence and erectile dysfunction, their fear of aging, and their genitals. They all share commitment problems, to everybody except each other. As their days diminish in a blur of swimming naked in 60-degree waves, brutal hangovers and an orgy, they wreck a convertible at top speed while paralyzed on dope and reveal the secrets that pushed them down the rabbit hole of no return. The writer trashed his talent, the doctor settled for pushing drugs instead of saving lives, the Wall Street jerk immersed himself in money-making schemes and false values and the gay guy … well, he’s the smartest one of all. On the fourth day, they find him hanging from the bathroom ceiling and you wonder what took him so long. The rest of this interminable yawn turns into a half-baked thriller as the three survivors get rid of Tim’s body (for no reason) and a pretty cop (a miscast Carla Gugino) gets suspicious and hangs around the cliff house (also for no reason). You know they will all pay for their sins in sad and terrible ways, but you can hardly wait for it to end.

Erupting with midlife-crisis clichés, Glenn Porter’s screenplay is ludicrous enough to get laughs in all the wrong places, while Mark Pellington’s stale, predictable and adolescent direction strands a fine cast in midstream without a row boat. Don’t even think of wasting your time and money on this dreck, especially if you suffer from vertigo. As the actors weave and stagger about from room to room, with walls spinning and rap music endangering the eardrums, the hand-held cameras drive the viewer to nausea. The cacophony is by the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Dead Kennedys and worse. Don’t these aging boy toys ever grow up? Not in terms of musical taste, to be sure. I Melt With You is a disastrous catalog of flaws, all accentuated by dilated, out-of-focus cinematography. The coke-snorting, booze-guzzling and vomiting add up to nearly two hours of frustration, anesthesia and pointless, self-indulgent excess. They should have called it I Vomit With You. There’s plenty of that too.

rreed@observer.com

I MELT WITH YOU

Running Time 125 minutes

Written by Glenn Porter

Directed by Mark Pellington

Starring Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven

0/4