Flight, the first non-motion-capture feature Cast Away�and�Forrest Gump filmmaker�Robert Zemeckis has directed in over a decade, is the kind of movie that, people like to bemoan, the industry doesn't make anymore. It's a solid, burnished work made about adults for adults and anchored by�Denzel Washington in a role that calls for some classic star gravitas. It's a mainstream film, but a consciously meaningful one, occupying that increasingly perilous mid-budget middle ground in a world continually drifting toward the opposing poles of massive blockbusters and scrappy indies. There's not a superhero in sight and not a trace of nuance either ? it's the straightforward drama of a man forced by circumstances out of his control to confront the destructive way he's been living his life.
That�Flight�turns out to be a disappointingly standard addiction story in its second half also serves as a reminder that Hollywood tends to be more invested in these types of self-serious movies than most actual audiences. In its need to reach a smug, by-the-book end goal of redemption and recovery, the film sheds much of the life and complexity it shows in the beginning, devolving from a morally ambiguous story to a story all about its moral.
Based on a screenplay by�John Gatins (Real Steel),�Flight's opening sequences are a dazzling display of studio filmmaking at its limber heights. The camera follows Captain Whip Whitaker (Washington) out of a night-long bender and through the start of what should be a quick, routine Orlando to Atlanta flight. Halfway through, however, the plane malfunctions and things go wrong with terrifying rapidity. In the wake of the crash, friends and family mourn the lost while the press and public clamor for someone to blame, and we learn that Whip may be a…
Jennifer Garner Jennifer Gimenez Jennifer Love Hewitt Jennifer Morrison Jennifer ODell Jennifer Scholle Jennifer Sky Jenny McCarthy
No comments:
Post a Comment