Flight is not a disaster movie.
Well….It kind of is.
The disaster in question is a plane flight that goes awry, a mid-air failure on board the flight means, seasoned airline pilot; Whip Whitaker must miraculously land the plane, saving almost every soul on board. In a normal disaster movie what I just said would be a spoiler, but not with Flight. All of this happens in 20 minutes, the disaster is what follows when Whip is accused of being drunk while flying the plane causing the deaths of six on board. Before we get to that lets back track.
The Flight sequence is amazing, terrifying and tense. Admittedly I’m not a fan of air travel so I may be biased here, but it was bloody alarming. Never have I felt so tense in a cinema (I lie. I felt like I was about to poo my pants during Argo, I did the same here). From this point on, I didn’t really know how the tension could possibly rack up.
The tension changes, from that of a large plane crash to Whip’s addiction to alcohol. The audience is left with stark and depressing images of miniature bottles of rum in hotel mini fridge’s and Whip battles not against a free falling airliner but with his discipline.
Its not all doom and gloom though as John Goodman stumbles on set, looking like the dude as a drug dealer for Whip and he really lights up the screen. He provides the much needed humour that is dotted around the film to hook you into Whips world making sure he isn’t a complete douche. This leads me nicely onto Denzel Washington, who does a fantastic job, and well deserves that Oscar nod he got earlier this year, for a controlled and powerful performance that he can toss on the pile with all the other fantastic ones he has done.
Flight is in no way a Disaster of a movie, it’s the complete opposite.
Callum Stewart
