Flight (02/05/2013)

Rated R for drug and alcohol abuse, language, sexuality/nudity and an intense action sequence.

Starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, James Badge Dale, Melissa Leo, Bruce Greenwood, Garcelle Beauvais, Brian Geraghty, Nadine Velazquez, Tamara Tunie, Adam Tomei

Directed by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Cast Away and Forrest Gump)

This movie could’ve been titled “Alcohol.”

Flight tells the redemption story of “Whip” (Washington), a commercial airline pilot who pulls off a heroic feat of flying in a damaged plane, saving 98 lives on a flight carrying 106 people. While the world begs to embrace him as a true American Hero, the everyman struggles with this label as he is forced to hold up to the scrutiny of an investigation that brings into question his behavior the night before the doomed flight.

So it may sound like I’m contradicting myself in this review but please bear with me all way to the end. I am giving this film a low sore, but there are some very good elements to it.

The cast delivers the kind of performance we have come to expect from Denzel Washington, John Goodman and Don Cheadle. It was very unsettling to see Washington play this character. He was so good at being bad. Robert Zemeckis has an amazing body of work and I’m not even going to attempt to say that his direction in this movie was anything but flawless.

Where Flight took a wrong turn for me was the story and the “hero.” I knew very little about this film going into it and perhaps that’s my fault, but this movie is so dark and so gritty I found myself feeling uncomfortable almost the entire time. I was expecting a story about a flawed man who becomes a hero while performing the unbelievable task of landing a damaged plane. But Zemeckis takes us deep into the ugly world of drug and alcohol addiction while giving us little hope of healing. SPOILER ALERT: I know Whip comes clean at the end and we are left believing there is a happy ending, but we see very little of the long and difficult road to recovery.

I believe my issue with the film is a personal one. Zemeckis and Washington did such a good job of making me not like Whip that even at the end I found myself not cheering for him.

Either way most of this film was difficult to watch and that’s why I say “Skip it.”

SHOULD KIDS SEE IT?
No, this movie has one of the most irresponsible “heroes” I have ever seen in a movie. Whip is a drug and alcohol addict, a womanizer, a terrible husband and father and chooses to lie about it throughout the entire movie (and finally comes clean in the last 15 minutes).

There is one extended scene involving nudity at the very beginning and the F-word is used throughout the film.

CONVERSATION STARTER

1. Have you ever lied about something really big? Tell me about it (Be prepared to tell a story of your own).


2. Did you come clean, get caught or are you still lying about it?


3. What was Whip’s lie?


4. What did he tell the other inmates was the reason he finally came clean?


5. Jesus tells us in John 8:32 that “the truth will set you free.”

   Did Whip find freedom?



6. What do you need to confess in order to find true freedom?