Flight

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% (2024-05-12)

Zemeckis lives! After three techno-animation flicks, he’s finally back to live action with an ambitious drama with Denzel Washington in the main role. But it’s not really reason enough to uncork the bubbly. Flight is nothing more than a slightly above average film hurt by a too long run and going in circles (I drink. I won’t drink. I drink again. Now I won’t drink again, really), and the pointless subplot with Kelly Reilly, who gets into Denzel’s life out of nowhere, only to equally fast disappear. The plane crash scene is breathtaking, though, and one of the best of its kind I’ve ever seen, it’s a pity that it’s right at the beginning and the film has nothing else to climb with, on the contrary, it dives down from there; like a plane. (2013-01-10)

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% (2013-09-02)

The course of the flight: the first third full of kerosene fumes of audiovisual brilliance, humor as black as a box and the promises of "character" drama. Then the flaps get stuck and the descent begins: slow dialogues, underdeveloped characters, a faint "investigative" drama that is displaced by the image of a decomposing protagonist letting the viewer in - even though Denzel is first-class swollen and he is a loser, it's not something that will invest you in the story. Instead, we get into subtle turbulences of predictability. However, the unraveling is not in vain, it has an edge and a charge... which the film then sticks into the ground with a lemonade conclusion, which actually breaks the whole effort to remove the hero aspect and the moral ambiguity of the story. Every sermon needs at least one improved sinner, something Švejk already knew, but when someone starts screaming at the altar, it is not yet a sign of God's enlightenment. Rather first-class amateurs, in this case a showy sniff at the audience, who like exemplary "self-criticism". From my point of view, it blunts all the blades that Flight 93 manages to hold on to. Nevertheless, it’s a sympathetic film which, thanks to a few juicy moments for me (apart from the first forty minutes or so, for example, the character of John Goodman and Zemeckis' still elegant direction) stays in the safe flight level between three and four stars. (2013-02-11)

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. (2013-03-31)