Flight - a Breathtaking Experience!

I was walking around the mall the other day and decided to kill the rest of the day so I stopped by the theater. I stood there gazing at the movie titles displayed on the screen just above the cashiers' little box. I wanted to either go in for Jack Reacher or the Vampire movie. My eyes, however, caught the movie "Flight" which premiered in November. I asked myself, why is this movie still showing? It must be good, I thought, and it was! 


R-Rate
The movie is R-rate. It started out with a deafening ringing cellphone. Denzel Washington (also known as "The Captain") got up and answered it. Rolling out of bed beside him is a fully naked - nothing is hidden - woman who turned out to be one of the flight attendants obviously sleeping with the captain throughout the night. The nude scene lasted for a few minutes, then came the cocaine sniffing moment, and then the perfectly suited-up captain approaching the plane in the rain. Putting all the opening scenes together, you know a disaster is  just around the corner. It was quite predictable.

The Nerve Tormenting Scenes
The most experienced, doped-out captain entered the cockpit and drama began. The plane now under the command of a man who partied all night and sniffed cocaine on the way in, and though you anticipated some disaster on the way, nothing at this state would prepare you for the kind of disaster this plane was getting into. Two dramatic events happened as the plane ascended.  One: the captain pushed the old-plane to the brink in an attempt to escape a severe weather which shook the plane violently after lifting off the runway. Two: the plane fell apart!
The plane came out of the turbulence remarkably, but the radical maneuver caused some mechanical problems. A few minutes into the flight, the plane suddenly took an out-of-control nose dive. Everyone was nervous, screaming, crying, except the captain who, through experience, took the plane on a ride many captain failed even on mere simulation. He switched the plane to manual control, emptied out the fuels, and rolled it upside down. The inversion reduced the speed of the plane and put the plane paralleled to the ground, and it was slow enough to glide to an open field, avoiding heavily populated residential areas. The heart wrenching experience stopped at the hospital when the crazy captain woke up with one eye completely patched, and with federal agents questioning him.

The Denial
When you see the man who saved hundred of passengers, in hospital bed, visited by a man with dope and boos, you know the captain is more than just a drunk, he's an alcoholic. The ensuing denials were severe. Weeks into the investigation, the captain was torn between convincing the jury with his sharp lawyer, and escaping the justice system to the Jamaican Islands in the Caribbean on his grandfather's old plane. What I don't understand, however, is why the author inserted a woman in the man's life because viewers came out with more questions than answers. The woman somehow disappeared and the captain never saw her again. At one point, she tried to help the captain by taking him to a rehab meeting where recovering alcoholics shared their experiences. If that was her role, it was simply unnecessary according to my "unprofessional analysis", because she dropped out never to play anymore role in the captain's life. But who cares? 
Then there's this hotel room. It was a safe place for the captain to live: no women, no boos, no cocaine, and no contact with the outside world. The guard outside the door was to protect him from getting drunk before the committee hearing in the morning. The room turned out to be a huge room divided by a wall and a door. In the captain's room - the fridge was filled with coke, diet and regular, water, orange juices and other healthy food; not an ideal place for an alcoholic.
He heard the knocking sound, but ignored it for a while. After a while he decided to investigate it. It was the room next door. The door was not closed, the windows were up, and the breezes rocks the door back and forth creating the "knocking sound". The room was empty, but the refrigerator was filled with all kinds of boos; a real paradise for an alcoholic. It took him a few minutes to decide what to do - the only thing he knows best, drinking beer. He was founded unconscious in the morning by his lawyer and the union representative. He was completely incapable of doing anything - too weak to walk out the door. Running out of options, the two men contacted the captain's best friend, the dope master. This old pal brought him the only thing that could keep him going for hours - cocaine. The fact that the two men: the Union representative and the captain's lawyer, helped the captain sniffed cocaine, demonstrated just how desperate some people are, especially lawyers, when it comes to justice and preservation of one's reputation. They aided in a criminal act just to save their own butts! He was was up and ready to go in just minutes, and was ready for the committee hearing.The hearing was a real shocker! The captain thought that he would play the system and get away with it, but he was wrong.

The Lies and The Redemption
With a clever lawyer and a union advocate with a very brilliant mind, on his side, the captain faced a possible acquittal. But there was one problem; the federal investigators who combed the scene found two empty miniature vodka bottle inside the plane. The captain's lawyer, however, killed the reports and shot down the toxicology report by challenging the methodology. All that he needed to do was DENY, DENY, and DENY - the thing he is good at. He just need to lie "one last time".
 During the hearing, the captain came face to face with his chronic lying self, and tarnishing the life of the lady he had sexual relationship with and obviously adored, and the family she left behind. He realized that his decision to flying the plane under the influence of drug resulted in her death, and now he was also to destroy her reputation (also) for good. 
Since no eyewitnesses to the captain's drinking and outings days and nights prior to the flight, the focus was now on two small empty bottles. He had denied everything up to this point, but when asked whether he believed the flight attendant - his part time lover - consumed the alcohol, he was torn into pieces. He emptied out his cup of water and said GOD HELP ME! He then shocked the entire room, his union representative, and his lawyer by admitting to flying the plane while intoxicated. He admitted that he was drinking heavily three nights before, and during the flight. Not only that, he was high on cocaine. Even though his lawyer and the union representative screamed "objection", the captain proceeded with his confession. 
The movie concluded with the captain speaking to a number of prisoners in a "rehabilitation" kind of meeting, in jail. He was telling them about his lies and how he overcame them. He felt so free though he was behind bars. 
I began to put all the pieces together - the whole movie was based on what he was telling those prisoners. It is a director's little trick; starting the movie with the end, and ending the movie with the starting scene. It is sometimes confusing but they make perfect sense to those who follow the plot from the beginning to the end. 

Moving End
The movie ended with the captain's son, the young boy who booted him out of his ex-wife's house, visiting him in jail. After a long father-son embrace, something the son probably missed growing up, they sat down together. The son told him he was writing an essay about the most incredible person he never met. The young man's class assignment was quite appropriate as he chose to interview the rehabilitated dad. He turned the recorder, placed it in front of his father and this is the question he gave his father - WHO ARE YOU? the captain's reaction was very emotional, but the movie just ended right there. You come out of the theater with so many lose ends but somewhat satisfied.
Being Mr. Washington's fan, I would rather see him a change man who accepted his fate and south to better his life, than him being gunned down by an angry Russian mob in the middle of the freeway as in the movie "Training Day". I felt good that the movie highlighted honesty and the will power to overcome severe addiction (being an alcoholic).

This is a must watch movie!