Flight

Kelly Reilly Director: Robert Zemeckis, Steve Starkey, Jack Rapke, Alan Silvestri Robert Zemeckis

Overview

In Robert Zemeckis' drama Flight, alcoholic pilot Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) does a miraculous job crash-landing a plane that has suffered a severe mechanical breakdown in midair, however the mandated investigation into the incident will inevitably lead to the discovery that he was flying the plane while drunk and on cocaine. As he attempts to sober up, Whip befriends a fellow addict he meets during his post-accident stay in the hospital. Soon he fails in his attempts to white-knuckle himself to sobriety, and with the help of his favorite drug-dealer (John Goodman) and his lawyer (Don Cheadle), Whip must prepare to testify about what happened on that fateful flight.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/24/2017
UPC:	0032429256850
Original Release:	2012
Rating:	R
Source:	PARAMOUNT
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:18:00
Sales rank:	13,701

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Kelly Reilly	Nicole
John Goodman	Harling Mays
Brian Geraghty	Ken Evans
Tamara Tunie	Margaret Thomason
Nadine Velazquez	Katerina Marquez
Garcelle Beauvais	Deana
Melissa Leo	Ellen Block
Carter Cabassa	Son on Plane
Adam C. Edwards	Actor
Charlie E. Schmidt Jr.	Actor
Will Sherrod	Schechter
Adam Ciesielski	Father on Plane
Boni Yanagisawa	Camelia Satou
Adam Tomei	Fran
Charlie E. Schmidt, Jr.	Tiki Pot
Dane Davenport	Derek Hogue
John Crow	Field Reporter
Ravi Kapoor	Dr. Kenan
Jill Jane Clements	Morning Nurse
Tommy Kane	Mark Mellon
Susie Spear	Waitress
Jim Tilmon	Actor
Charles Z. Gardner	Actor
Timothy James Adams	Whip's Dad
Darius Woods	Young Will
Ron Caldwell	Trevor
Dylan Kussman	Two Beer Barry
Janet Metzger	Sheila
Bethany Anne Lind	Vicky Evans
Sharon Blackwood	Peach Tree Employee
Pam Smith	Peach Tree Employee
Rev. Charles Z. Gardner	Pentecostal Minister
Jason Benjamin	Stalking Reporter
Justin Martin	Will
Shannon Walshe	Tilda Banden
Rhoda Griffis	Amanda Anderson
Michael Beasley	Officer Edmonds
Ted Hall	TV Reporter
Laila Pruitt	Girl on Elevator
Precious Bright	Mom on Elevator
Steve Coulter	NTSB Officer at Hearing
Ted Huckabee	Prison Guard
John Crown	Actor
Susie Spear Purcell	Waitress
Victoria Burrows	Actor
Charlie Schmidt	Actor
Hal Williams	Voices
Kwesi Boakye	Voices
Conor O'Neill	Kip

Technical Credits

Robert Zemeckis	Director
Steve Starkey	Director
Jack Rapke	Director
Alan Silvestri	Director
Cherylanne Martin	Producer,Executive Producer
Heather Kelton	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Director Robert Zemeckis is already responsible for one of the most harrowing plane crashes in movie history: the disastrous voyage that led to Tom Hanks being Cast Away. Twelve years later, Zemeckis outdoes himself with the opening 20 minutes of Flight, in which alcohol- and cocaine-fueled Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) must make a miraculous crash landing when the jet he's piloting suffers a severe mechanical breakdown in midair. His quick thinking saves all but six lives on the plane, but those deaths trigger a federal investigation that seems destined to uncover his substance abuse. That opening act is a piece of peerless filmmaking, an unrelentingly tense and upsetting evocation of a near-death experience. Sadly, the rest of Flight is an old-fashioned addiction drama with Whitaker struggling to stay sober, but refusing to accept anyone else's help to do so. This is the kind of role actors live for, after all who wouldn't want to play a guy who's both a national hero and an addict, and Washington certainly demands your attention. He commands the screen, playing the gifted pilot's cool-in-a-crisis authority as effectively as he does Whip's self-loathing when he starts hitting the bottle time after time. Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins turn this battle between Whip's two selves into a basic visual scheme between alcohol and religion. Talk of God and higher powers peppers the film, and for all of the times we see the sloshed captain swigging a Budweiser or a gallon of vodka, we see him confronted with religious iconography just as often. Putting the central conflict of the picture in such stark terms would work better if the film were streamlined, but Flight clocks in at about 135 minutes, and it wallows in Whip's contradictions for so long that the symbolism quickly grows heavy-handed. There's little narrative drive, so we wait for the big moment when Whitaker has to testify about what happened, wondering if he's going to come clean or continue his slide into self-destruction. A very strong cast is mostly underutilized: Don Cheadle doesn't have enough to do as Whip's lawyer, Bruce Greenwood is fine as the beleagured man's best friend, and Kelly Reilly does what she can with the worst character in the movie -- a fellow junkie who strikes up a friendship with Whitaker when they are in the hospital together. Only John Goodman makes an impression as Whip's freewheeling dealer -- whose every entrance is unsubtly scored to the Rolling Stones classic "Sympathy for the Devil."" Flight isn't a bad movie, but it isn't a good one either. After his 12-year detour into motion-capture filmmaking, it continues Zemeckis' attempts to deal with big ideas -- it's a natural follow-up to Forrest Gump, Contact, and Cast Away -- but he's shed practically all of the impish wit that made his earliest work, like Used Cars and Back to the Future, so memorable. He's matured in the least appealing sense of the phrase.