Flight

In Flight, Denzel Washington plays Whip, a pilot leading a life of addiction.  His routine seems to be booze and loose women at night, followed by cocaine like a rejuvenating chaser before he begins flying all day.  Somehow this works for him, and probably has for years, until a mechanical failure mid-flight forces him to make a daring crash landing.  He is regarded as a hero for his quick thinking, but as the investigation of the crash digs deeper, his sobriety comes into question.

A majority of the film focuses on Whip’s denial and the way he and the airline’s team of lawyers plan to save his public reputation.  There is a lot of damage control by many people.  Right away, Whip retreats to his remote family home and dumps all the drugs and alcohol.  The lawyers get Whip’s blood sample, with a damning blood alcohol content of .2 and traces of cocaine, stricken from the record due to trivial technicalities.  And when things really go south at the crucial moment, Harling Mays (John Goodman) is called in to give Whip his dose of cocaine to fly above his hangover.  It’s a lot of work to keep Whip looking like a hero.

The crash scene is an early pivotal point in the film that comes with nail biting intensity.  In a sudden moment, what was a normal flight becomes a nightmare when the plane inexplicably goes into a nosedive.  This wakes Whip out of his drunken nap (he made himself a screwdriver earlier in the flight), to find that his copilot, Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty) has no control.  With quick thinking, he orders everyone to strap in and he turns the plane upside down, to glide towards an open field and lose speed.  As the ground grows nearer, and one heroic stewardess is helplessly hurled around the cabin, he flips the plane back upright just before taking out the steeple of a church and crashing into the field behind it.  This scene, especially just after the crash, is not for the faint of heart.

One thing I really enjoyed about Flight was the soundtrack.  It boasts classic hits like Gimmie Shelter by The Rolling Stones and Feelin’ Alright by Traffic.  Many of the songs seem to help set a tone for Whip’s intoxicated state.  Perhaps it is how Whip has come to imagine himself after all the liquor and cocaine and he is heading into the air.  He does a good job of pulling off this persona under his authoritative uniform and dark sunglasses.

At last year’s Oscars, Flight was nominated for two awards, best original screenplay and Denzel Washington was nominated for lead actor.  When it came to the best picture race, I believe Flight came up just short in a thick field.  It’s a very smart and compelling film that focuses on a man and his journey through and away from his denial of addiction.  It could be a slight disappointment for those who are more concerned with the technical reasons for the plane crash than the character who in all the wrong ways, became a hero.

“Nobody could’ve landed that plane like I did.”

The Hurt Locker

I would dare to say that I’ve reviewed close to a hundred war movies on this blog.  Most of those deal with WWII, usually with a sense of pride and valor.  Coming in second would be Vietnam, with a more jaded and anti-war agenda.  Then there were some dealing with WWI, the Civil War and other wars spread throughout the history of the world.  Until The Hurt Locker, there was not one good movie made about the war going on in Iraq.

In a way, it seems that a typical war film has gone out of style at the Oscars.  Since 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, the only other nominated film focusing on soldiers in action was Letters From Iwo Jima, and that took on the Japanese perspective of WWII.  More often, we find war just to be the background and setting for twenty-first century films, like The Pianist or Atonement.

What I’m trying to say is that it takes a leap of faith and some real balls to make gritty modern war film these days.  Those balls belong to Kathryn Bigelow, who fearlessly brings us a story of men on an army bomb squad in an Iraqi city.  There, everyone is a possible enemy and nearly anything could be a possible bomb.  We quickly sense how nerve-wracking this life is.

It may look like fun at first, playing with the cool little robot to get a look at the possible explosive from a safe distance, but we quickly realize how things can go dangerously wrong in a flash.  The term kill-zone is used in the most accurate sense.  It’s scary to think of that as just part of a normal on-the-job vocabulary.

The Hurt Locker does some of the best moments of suspense in recent film history.  Paraphrasing Hitchcock, it is not the sound of the bang that brings suspense, it’s the anticipation.  Over and over throughout the film, we’re watching men defuse bombs.  That in itself screams suspense, but add in a reckless character, and his crew scouting out onlookers on balconies and rooftops wondering if any of them hold the detonator.  You won’t be able to take your eyes off the screen and won’t even realize that you’re holding your breath.

Men like Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) realize the constant danger far too well and becomes obsessed with the fact that he could be dead at any moment.  It’s not healthy to dwell on the risks of this job too much.  On the other hand, it doesn’t help that Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) puts himself in unnecessary danger.

James focuses on being on the brink of demise in a different way.  He thrives on it.  Like an artist in the zone, he is at his finest when he is trying to figure out how to defuse a bomb.  Simply put, he is a real expert about things that are meant to blow up and kill him.  There’s a feeling of swagger and power about him and he loves wearing the padded suit.  Besides taking rough chances, he is an excellent soldier.  Though it’s what he is best at, James isn’t the kind of guy who cares about medals or rank.  Under his bed, he keeps bits of bombs he’s defused, “things that nearly killed me” he calls them.  Back home he has baby son and ex-wife, those are the things he doesn’t know how to handle, so he keeps coming back to Iraq for more.

“The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”