Airplanes have taken on an entirely new meaning in our culture (post 9/11 and after Captain Sully’s heroic landing on the Hudson
River.) Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washingon) has a 9 a.m. flight. He’s also got a wife demanding more child support but neither his job nor problems are something he can’t handle so long as he has that wake-up line of cocaine and that morning vodka and orange juice.
The flight manifest says there are 102 people on board. When turbulence hits it’s one thing. But when the plane malfunctions, it’s another. As Whip brings the plane into a semi safe landing, only 4 die, and 96 people escape with mostly minor injuries. Captain Whip is a hero. Or isn’t he? This is the story of two crashes.
Enter John Goodman the drug dealer in an amusing Big Lebowski-esque part. Enter Don Cheadle as the attorney hired by the airline owner to represent their interests in Whip and make the problem disappear. Melissa Leo heads up the National Transportation Safety Board investigating the case . Everybody points a finger. Was it the mechanics or was it the Pilot? It can be argued that it was
a broken plane but he’s still a broken man.
Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) understands character and in this it’s the lack of character that may
have allowed Whip to land the plane but in the long run, he has to come face to face with his inner demons. There is a lesson in the pains of alcoholism, and the fact that the more we enable a drinker, the worse the drinker becomes. They need to ‘crash’ themselves, before they can soar. The problem is that a film like this can either end tragically or in redemption, and in the meantime, it’s a slow death for the audience getting there. Over two hours of a film. Three tiaras