Flight
starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Brue Greenwood, Brian Geraghty and Tamara Tunie
written by John Gatis
directed by Robert Zemeckis
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
I watched it with my daughter. She thought I was crazy to watch a plane crash movie only five days before flying to Canada for my summer vacation. Maybe she was right. But I fell asleep during this one, too, just as I did during Looper. I thought the movie was going to be about a plane crash, or a flight with emergencies aboard and the passengers and crew together overcome the emergencies. Instead it was about a pilot who safely crash-landed a commercial airplane after the plane malfunctioned in flight. But the pilot, Denzel Washington, is a secret alcoholic and rug user and when this is revealed during the FAA investigation of course he is blamed for the whole damned thing. The film was about his struggle with his substance abuse and the destruction it wrecked on his life. It was not about the flight. So it wasn’t as interesting as I expected.