Flight

The first half-hour of Flight is a perfect lesson on how an elite pilot should behave in a crisis situation – knock down a pint of vodka with juice, turn a plummeting plane upside down, and land it in a field full of religious people. Zemeckis handles this little excursion into the disaster genre so masterfully that even James Cameron should applaud him from the deck of the Titanic. The rest of the film, however, is a rather painful confession of a broken alcoholic, which is not as dynamic as the spectacular opening, but it maintains an admirable emotional level, mainly thanks to Washington's first-class performance and the very naturalistic direction. Sometimes it hurts to look the truth in the eye, but this is the kind of film worth enduring that pain for. 80% (02/09/2013)

I'm glad I caught up on this one. The combination of Robert Zemeckis and Denzel Washington sounded good and it worked. The opening 30 minutes with the plane crash is a decently intense beast and I liked the aftermath, the investigation and the subsequent trial where the protagonist is tried for alcohol and drugs. I had fun and Denzel was excellent as always. 75% (12/05/2024)

Denzel is cool! His nomination for the golden baldy is deserved. Although Flight claims that booze is bad, it basically says that cocaine is fine (if you have a tendency to overdo it with booze). I have one problem with this picture, I would have ended it after the first “no" before the commission. Then it wouldn’t have been such a propaganda stunt. Robert Zemeckis was missing in the classic movies genre, and his talent speaks for itself. His intimate scenes are sensational and he does visual masterpieces (plane falling) even better. Next time, a little shorter and pick a slightly better screenplay. Praise be to Jesus! (11/01/2013)

It was impossible not to know about this movie before its premiere. You see, I found the premise really appealing anytime I thought about it. I mean who wouldn’t like to see an airplane pilot save most of the passengers and crew with an absolutely incredible maneuver, all this while drunk and as high as a kite? The scene of the plane crash is so brutal that I could barely breathe in the first thirty minutes of the movie. Then the movie moves on to the investigation and at that point I sort of thought that the film would slow down somewhat. It did, but surprisingly, it didn’t get boring. For a movie that takes two hours and fifteen minutes, I must say ‘good job!’. On top of that, Denzel delivers a very good performance. I haven’t seen a person dissected so naturally in a movie for a long time. Absurdity mixes with reality, but the result and the final scene were definitely worth it. (21/02/2014)

A slow, moderate and conservative film with as much humanism as possible and a proper moral lesson at the end. Robert Zemeckis is a skilled director and leads the actors excellently and Denzel Washington delivers an extraordinary performance. The crash scene is not as intense as I imagined, but overall the drama is okay. The hero behaves logically, I enjoyed the dialogue sequences, and we also have a solid twist. The character of Kelly Reilly seems a bit redundant and forced (just to have a romantic storyline), but that's a minor detail. Maybe not the second Forrest Gump, but I expected something much shallower. (31/03/2013)