You know, sometimes it’s great to just settle in and enjoy a Denzel Washington movie. Although I’m not really the type to have a favorite actor (there’s no one where I follow them from role to role regardless of the topic), I did go on a Denzel kick back in 1999 in the wake of his amazing performance in “The Hurricane.” Although he can’t save completely awful scripts, such as “John Q,” he is never bad in anything and he always elevates the material.
2012’s “Flight” (now on DVD) is a prime example of Washington turning a good script into a great movie. Granted, the technical mastery of director Robert Zemeckis in the opening act’s plane crash has something to do with the way “Flight” hooks a viewer right from takeoff. And certainly John Goodman is a hoot as the cocaine supplier for Washington’s alcoholic pilot Whip Whitaker, who levels out with doses of the white stuff; Goodman is the only over-the-top element in the movie, and that’s why I’ll allow it.
But consider that “Flight” was written by John Gatins, whose resume includes three even-the-previews-look-silly sports movies, “Summer Catch,” “Hard Ball” and “Coach Carter.” Granted, Gatins is becoming a better writer as his career progresses: “Real Steel” was positively received, and “Flight” shows he can operate outside of sports clichés and pen a gripping character-study-slash-legal-drama.
Still, “Flight” could’ve been generic without Washington in the lead role. I love how he plays the crash sequence with total calm. It’s especially impressive when contrasted with the Bill-Paxton-in-“Aliens”-esque turn by the guy playing Whip’s copilot. It’s impossible to not totally buy Denzel in a role: Just as much as he was a boxer in “The Hurricane” and a cop in “Training Day,” he’s a pilot here. If I’m ever a passenger on a plane that starts falling apart in midair, I want a drunken, coked-up Whip Whitaker and the controls.
There are two things that could’ve derailed “Flight.” One: alcoholism and drug abuse as Whip’s vice. But it works because some scenes are darkly funny (Whip crashing face-first onto the living-room rug, beer bottles crashing like bowling pins), and there is genuine back-and-forth drama about whether alcohol is a problem for him (after all, everyone agrees that only Whip could’ve avoided an all-out crash, and it’s lightly suggested that being on drugs might’ve even enhanced his performance).
And two, it could’ve succumbed to the “good man persecuted by an evil, self-serving bureaucracy” formula, where we sympathize with the hero because we hate the villain. However, Gatins wisely keeps the antagonists (the NTSB, which investigates the crash) in the background. The characters we get to know are on Whip’s side: The pilots’ union head (Bruce Greenwood), the criminal defense lawyer (Don Cheadle) and Whip’s recovering-addict girlfriend (Kelly Reilly). As such, “Flight” is filled with drama among people trying to help our flawed hero, and refreshingly light on melodrama.
Perhaps this is an extension of the vibe Washington gives off, but all of “Flight” seems genuine. There’s a rundown old farmstead — Whip’s grandfather’s place — that serves as a sanctuary like the similar location in the first “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie. The action on the airplane is frighteningly visceral. And the details of the NTSB investigation seem believable.
“Flight” doesn’t have much new to say — it is, essentially, an alcoholism drama — but it’s a reminder that few things beat an old-fashioned crackerjack drama featuring arguably the finest actor of the last 20 years.