AFF Review: Flight

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Denzel Washington in Flight

Movies like Flight are why reviews are necessary. I had seen the trailer and expected the film to be a legal thriller: what happened to the plane Denzel Washington's character pilots to cause it to crash? And how was he able to land it with only a small number killed in the process? Well, the laugh was on me, because you discover the answers to these questions in the first 30 minutes of the movie. Instead of being a thriller, Flight -- which screened at Austin Film Festival and opens in wide release Friday -- is a drawn-out drama about alcoholism.

The movie kicks off with the Barenaked Ladies song "Alcohol," which pretty much tells you what you need to know about this movie. All the late-1990s music in the soundtrack had me wondering if the movie really was based in the 21st century. Pilot Whit Whitaker (Denzel Washington) lounges in a hotel bed, chatting on a cell phone as his flight attendant ladyfriend (Nadine Velazquez) walks around s-l-o-w-l-y getting dressed for the day and lighting up a joint. Whit finishes up a beer, snorts some coke and walks to his plane as Joe Cocker's "Feelin' Alright" plays. And then disaster strikes, and Whit is able to overcome it.

Mixed in with Whit's prep-for-flight scenes are glimpses at the life of junkie Nicole (Kelly Reilly, Sherlock Holmes) trying to score her last best hit. The Cowboy Junkies' "Sweet Jane" (see the above note about the soundtrack) plays as she jams a needle in her vein. Of course Nicole and Whit meet up eventually and we're supposed to believe there's mutual attraction. Sadly, Reilly and Washington are never able to create any sort of chemistry between their characters. The character of Nicole really only serves as a plot device in Whit's journey. I call her a Manic Junkie Dream Girl (with apologies to the AV Club).

Don Cheadle plays a determined lawyer trying to save Whit's ass, John Goodman gets the laughs as Whit's dealer, and I was pleased to see two Homicide: Life on the Streets alums (Melissa Leo and Peter Gerety) in the same film (no shared screen time, though). These small blessings, along with the super-intense flight sequence, made me feel like my time wasn't too wasted watching Flight.

The addiction film is one of my least favorite genres, so I didn't have many strong feelings about Flight ... except disappointment at being misled by the trailer. At the AFF screening at the Paramount, I heard people in the audience audibly crying, so moved were they by this movie. However, the melodrama and forced emotion of it all just left me cold.