Denzel Washington is a formidable man, both on and off the screen, and he’s shrewd enough to play the occasional villain to keep audiences guessing what’s behind his smile. But few movie stars have played a hero as flawed as Whip Whitaker, the airline pilot in “Flight.”
There’s no slow lengthening of shadows here. We know from the very first scene that Whitaker is a womanizer, a drunk and a drug user. And after an all-night bender with a flight attendant (Nadine Velazquez), he’s got a plane leaving in two hours.
When the flight hits turbulence during takeoff, the woozy Whitaker becomes the daredevil Denzel we know and love. His devout co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) literally smells something suspicious and is grateful to take the controls after Whitaker dozes off.
But a second, more serious incident separates the man from the boy, and in a thrillingly choreographed sequence, Whitaker saves almost a hundred lives.
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After the crash there are bureaucrats to satisfy, and in his hospital bed, divorced-dad Whitaker has to lie about his alcoholism to a fellow pilot who is his best friend (Bruce Greenwood) and a criminal defense lawyer (Don Cheadle).
The one person in whom Whitaker can confide is a patient named Nicole (Kelly Reilly), who is recovering in the hospital from a heroin overdose. When his physical wounds heal, he brings Nicole to his refuge from investigators and the press, the Georgia farm where his late father taught him to fly.
Yet at every juncture where a conventional morality tale would force Whitaker to sober up, he digs himself deeper.
Washington gives a powerful but nuanced performance, never indulging in drunken excess while always raising the emotional tension. Around him are co-stars who fully inhabit their roles. Cheadle is as sharp as a tack on a teacher’s seat, and in the small role of Whitaker’s coke-dealing enabler, John Goodman reinvents the vigilante in “The Big Lebowski” the way Washington reinvents the crooked cop in “Training Day.”
But the real hero here might be director Robert Zemeckis. A perennial Oscar contender for movies such as “Forrest Gump” and “Cast Away,” he returns triumphantly from a decade on the island of motion-capture animation to make his most substantive film ever. We can quibble about the punitive punchline of John Gatins’ script, but keeping complexity aloft for so long makes “Flight” a miraculous feat.
What “Flight” • Three and a half stars out of four • Rating R • Run time 2:10 • Content drug and alcohol abuse, strong language, sexuality/nudity and intense action
