Robert Zemeckis spent a decade in motion capture, and the first live-action film he made after coming back is about a man who cannot stay upright. Flight premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 14, 2012, and Paramount released it on November 2. Denzel Washington plays William “Whip” Whitaker Sr., an airline pilot who lands a broken plane in a field and saves 96 of the 102 people aboard. Then the National Transportation Safety Board reads his blood.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
Whip Whitaker and the Orange Juice
The morning of the flight, Whip snorts cocaine in an Orlando hotel room to wake up after a night of drinking with flight attendant Katerina Marquez, who is scheduled to work his trip. He captains SouthJet Air Flight 227 to Atlanta. Once airborne, first officer Ken Evans takes the controls while Whip mixes vodka into his orange juice and sleeps.
A catastrophic dive wakes him. Whip rolls the aircraft upside down and puts it down in an open field. Six people die, Katerina among them, saving a child. Whip wakes in an Atlanta hospital with moderate injuries.
Charlie Anderson, who represents the pilots union, tells him Evans is in a coma but expected to survive. Whip’s dealer Harling Mays visits with a bottle. Whip refuses it. He meets Nicole, a heroin user recovering from an overdose in the same hospital, and the two form a connection.
What Hugh Lang Can Dismiss
Out of the hospital, Whip pours his alcohol away at his late father’s farm and resolves to get sober. Then he sits down with Charlie and defense attorney Hugh Lang, who explain that the NTSB drew blood while Whip was unconscious and the toxicology report shows he was intoxicated in the air.
Hugh believes he can get the evidence thrown out on a technicality. Whip worries about prison and starts drinking hard again.
That is the whole engine of Flight. The crash is not the crisis. The crash is the thing Whip has to keep being praised for while the paperwork closes in.
Some miracles are not what they seem.
Denzel Washington and the Men Around Him
Washington carries the film, and the Academy nominated him for Best Actor. The role asks him to be charming, competent and completely unreliable in the same scene, and he does it without asking for sympathy. John Gatins wrote the screenplay, also nominated, and Zemeckis directed. Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Steve Starkey, Zemeckis and Jack Rapke produced.
The supporting cast is built for pressure. Don Cheadle plays Hugh Lang, the lawyer who treats the case as a problem of evidence. Bruce Greenwood plays Charlie Anderson, the union man who wants to believe the best version of Whip. Kelly Reilly plays Nicole, whose recovery runs alongside his. John Goodman shows up as Harling Mays and is the only person in the film who finds any of this funny.
| Character | Actor | Role in Whip’s collapse |
|---|---|---|
| Whip Whitaker | Denzel Washington | Pilot; intoxicated during Flight 227 |
| Hugh Lang | Don Cheadle | Defense attorney; sees a technicality |
| Charlie Anderson | Bruce Greenwood | Pilots union; credits Whip with the landing |
| Nicole | Kelly Reilly | Fellow patient; forms a connection with Whip |
| Harling Mays | John Goodman | Drug dealer; brings alcohol to the hospital |
| Ken Evans | Brian Geraghty | First officer; in a coma after the crash |
| Katerina Marquez | Nadine Velazquez | Flight attendant; dies saving a child |
| Ellen Block | Melissa Leo | NTSB |
138 Minutes That Earn the Last Twenty
Flight runs 138 minutes. The film does not treat the landing as the point. It stays with Whip through the hospital, the lawyer’s office and the farm while he decides, again and again, not to be saved.
Melissa Leo appears as NTSB investigator Ellen Block, and her scenes are the ones that turn the film from a survival story into an inquiry. Whip is not being asked whether he flew well. He is being asked what was in his body while he did it.
The film’s weakness is that it is tidier than its subject. The ending gives Whip a resolution the earlier acts have argued against. Zemeckis came back to live action after Cast Away and What Lies Beneath in 2000. This is a performance film with a procedural wrapped around it.
That trade is worth making. Washington’s best scenes land because the script has spent so long letting him be likable.
Flight grossed $161.8 million against a $31 million budget, landed on multiple critics’ year-end top ten lists, and took two Oscar nominations — Best Actor for Washington and Best Original Screenplay for Gatins.
The score is 7.6 of 10. What holds it there is Washington, and what keeps it from going higher is a third act that forgives its protagonist faster than the first two acts earned. The crash is the spectacle. The blood test is the movie.
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