I had no plans to see Flight. Until the Equalizer, I had written off Denzel Washington as an amazing actor whose projects are more Hollywood than art recently. Bear in mind, a movie can be Hollywood and good, but not art, and art, but not good. When Denzel Washington gets a film reel from the Kennedy Center Honors, it will contain all his Spike Lee movies, Philadelphia, Much Ado About Nothing, Devil in a Blue Dress, The Hurricane, American Gangster, Training Day and The Equalizer. It will also include his meaningful films Remember the Titans, The Great Debaters and Antwone Fisher. It should not include Book of Eli, which I enjoyed, 2 Guns, which I didn’t, Man on Fire, John Q or Flight. These movies are good movies because of Denzel Washington, but they suffer from a level of absurdity only present in Hollywood films.
Flight was promoted as a heroic pilot who is going to get railroaded by the airline company. Instead it is really a sensational Clean and Sober where the viewer is made to tut tut disapprovingly at his behavior while simultaneously reveling and celebrating it since he is hyper functional and fabulous complete with a groovy John Goodman who gets a turn at playing the dude. He even gets a series of scorching hot love interests. It is all so absurd. It has the best plane in danger scene ever, but I should have trusted my instincts and stayed away from the cheese.