On Great Characters with Flight

There are many great films with great characters. There are few mediocre films with great characters. Flight is one of them. John Gatins has created in Whip Whitaker, played by Denzel Washington, a character who is both good and bad simultaneously and he brings life to the film when it is at its best and worst.

Whip is a pilot who enjoys all the trimmings that come with the status of airline pilot: women, alcohol and drugs. Whip doesn’t just enjoy them; he enjoys all three the morning he is due to fly cross-country. Juxtaposed with this unforgiveable and entirely depraved behaviour is Whip’s status as one of the best pilots in the air. So, when his plane falls apart mid air it is only the skill of Whip that keeps 90% of the passengers from what would have been a certain death.

What follows is an entirely believable lawsuit that in turns investigates the crash while prosecuting Whip for flying high, drunk and tired. The catch is, of course, that Whip is entirely in the wrong and should be punished to the full extent of the law, yet without him the failure of the plane (that has nothing to do with Whip) would have resulted in total deaths.

Washington plays this dichotomy of traits with sublime excellence communicating at times the enjoyable highs of drug use seen in the earlier scenes of Goodfellas (1990) with the terrible lows of grittier drug representations. The film does lag in the final third and it is too long. The ending is problematic also and director Robert Zemeckis opts for mawkish sentimentality, which feels incongruous. Despite this Flight is, when Washington is on screen, captivating.