Denzel takes FLIGHT in his SIXTH Oscar-Nominated Role

Two time Oscar winner Denzel Washington stars in new movie Flight which is released in UK cinemas on 1st February. The movie opens with the main protagonist Whip Whitaker, played by Denzel, in a hotel room with a young woman laying around after a crazy night of drink and drugs. Whip is a pilot and is called in to fly that morning and so despite his drunk condition turns up for work and commences the flight. The plane does not take off smoothly and shortly begins to fail ending up in the pilot crash landing the plane in the safest way he knows how.
 

 

The tricky dilemma of this film is that no other pilot could have landed this plane a better way and could have saved as many passengers as Whip, however he was in no fit state to fly and so he also put those passengers lives in jeopardy the moment he set foot on the plane. The tragic point to this character is that he believes he cannot function without alcohol and so maybe he would not have found the bravery to land the plane the way he did if he was sober. This film poses many moral dilemmas like this, also bringing in the element of God's will, fate, human error and human control and whether these can all co-exist.

 

Flight has one of the best opening twenty-five minutes of a film I have seen in a while, creating sheer suspense and terror for the audience and curiosity as to how Whip deals with the aftermath of this situation in terms of his own choices. For this film asks questions about the choices we make and the circumstances this leads to and how we can repair this through further decisions we make. Sometimes the decisions are made for us, forcing us to change our behaviour for better or worse. This film is a character study ultimately that directs its attention to Whip, a man who refuses to lose control over his world of addiction when in actual fact he has control over his life and struggles to come to terms with this.

 

The first step to recovering from addiction is to admit your problems but Whip cannot and so the audience follows his tormenting journey of understanding the root of his troubles. Denzel gives one of his finest performances in recent years as a alcoholic scared to show his vulnerability. He sunk into this character with such depth I felt for every move he made and word he spoke, particularly in the last few scenes.

 

This movie is life-altering making the audience ask themselves questions they may have previously been afraid to investigate. Hopefully, Denzel can score a hat trick at this year's Academy Awards with this one.