I wouldn't describe this movie as an air crash, but the fact that it isn't is largely down to its flabbergasting near-disaster sequence, in which veteran pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) manages to crash-land his crippled airliner after it suffers a catastrophic mechanical failure. Six people die but 96 are saved, in a heroic feat of airmanship which brings gasps of admiration from press and public. The shot of the aircraft flying upside down at treetop height is probably worth its own techie Oscar.
However, Whip has a dirty secret. He's an alcoholic whose pre-flight routine stipulates a line or two of reviving cocaine, with a puff of weed for good measure. Possibly not the guy you'd pick to fly for your life, yet paradoxically you should. Despite his amazing flying feat he's in breach of reams of official aviation regulations, and once the results from his post-crash tox screen are in, he's got a battle on his hands to avoid jail.
Washington, the intriguingly low-key superstar, is terrific, his nonchalant daddy-cool jive eroding into sweaty-browed desperation as the extent of his plight becomes clear. It's also refreshing – perhaps over-refreshing – that director Robert Zemeckis gives generous vent to Whitaker's addictiveness, as he quaffs in-flight vodkas, drives around town barely able to see over piles of beer cans, and empties a hotel minibar single-handed. Quite a contrast to saccharine Hollywood social-worker fodder like When a Man Loves a Woman, where Meg Ryan is barely allowed to drink a thimbleful of chardonnay before she's incarcerated in rehab.
Don Cheadle gleams menacingly as the sleek lawyer hired by the pilots' union to bury the incriminating tox report and Bruce Greenwood steps up loyally as Whip's old Navy flying buddy, but otherwise the flick struggles to fill its excessive 138-minute length. Kelly Reilly as an implausibly beauteous junkie has no dramatic point whatsoever. John Goodman's turn as Whip's rambunctious drug dealer might have looked at home in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but here he's just the over-acting rogue elephant in the room. And the ending is deflatingly tame where it could have been deliciously dark and morally dubious. The DVD gives you an informative short, Anatomy of a Plane Crash, where the crew explain how they did it. You get extra extras with the Blu-ray edition.
Watch the plane crash sequence from Flight
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