By Corrina Taylor
Staff Writer

The plane slips into a dive as captain Whip Whitaker struggles to gain control of his plane, passengers are yelling out in fear of their lives as the plane continues to descend. The copilot and flight attendant struggle to keep calm as Whitaker, played by Denzel Washington, inverts the plane in order to slow down the descent. Once the plane flips right side up again for the descent they brace for impact as they collide against the rough ground of an open field.

Flight does a great job of portraying the crash scene; the horrific events seem lifelike and truly terrifying even for an audience member safely sitting in their seat. Once Washington is taken to the hospital he is greeted by his drug dealer played by John Goodman, and meets a beautiful addict recently admitted for an overdose played by Kelly Reilly.

Goodman is the “funny guy” in this movie, sometimes in scenes when humor was not required and could have been left out. Flight is rated R and with good reason, the first scene shows nudity and throughout the film audiences are exposed to profanity, excessive alcoholism and drug usage.

The excessive drug and alcohol consumption continues to destroy Washington’s life and the audience can only watch in horror as he continually refused to get help. At times the movie put drugs in a positive light, displaying cocaine as a good way to pick you up after a hangover, which I thought, is in poor taste.

The commercials do not adequately depict the movie, from watching commercials one would assume it was about a plane crash and a pilot was wrongly accused of drinking. They show the drunkard Washington in a positive light as an innocent man when in fact he was an alcoholic and a heavy user of cocaine, he does a great job of being the bad guy that you do not want to like due to his actions and egotistic ways but can’t help it due to his charming attitude.

Washington’s performance is first-rate. From the scenes where he is stumbling over drunk and slurring words, to scenes where he is struggling to regain his composure and not cry. Overall, the actors chosen for this movie played their parts well and are very believable.

Actors Bruce Greenwood and Don Cheadle played the role of Washington’s friend and lawyer and show genuine concern for him as he went through the trial. They do a good job of balancing the dramatic scenes with light humor.

Towards the end of the movie everyone is struggling to protect Washington and you forget who the actual good guy is as they manipulate the system in order to get him off scotch free. I thought overall this is a good movie to see once, I wouldn’t buy it and watch it over and over again but it is definitely a movie to see at least once.

My Rating A-