"That was some trip, huh?"
Flight is a hugely welcome return to the land of the cinematic living for Robert Zemeckis, in which he gives a fairly routine disaster-film meets addiction-tv-movie-of-the-week genuine cinematic flair and marshals engaging tonal shifts and superb performances extremely well. Subsidiary characters seemingly drift in and out of the narrative but all coalesce neatly and purposefully (with on-the-money performances by Bruce Greenwood, John Goodman, Kelly Reilly and Melissa Leo), all circling around a tremendous (and genuinely awards-worthy) central performance by Denzel Washington, whose character provides a delicious moral dilemma within the movie and for the audience. The first act (the actual knuckle-whitening crash) and the third act (effectively the 'courtroom' scene) are surprisingly brief and effectively concise, whilst the long mid-section allows real character exploration that pays off at the end. The emotionally-literate script by John Gatins deliberately swerves potential melodrama (and the couple of moments that it strays are forgivable), Alan Silvestri provides a surprisingly restrained and beautiful score, but this is very much a tour-de-force by Washington which is a pleasure to watch.
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