REVIEW - FLIGHT

A patchy drama that springs several compelling scenes on you amidst a few tepid ones which undo much of the instinctive work achieved elsewhere. After a traumatic sequence aboard a plummeting aircraft, Robert Zemeckis manages to sustain the dramatic impetus, an impressive accomplishment for the fact that he does so without instigating any forward movement in the plot for the first hour. Extended diversions with superfluous characters, a gradual development in our understanding of the life of Denzel Washington's Whip Whitaker, the heroic pilot with drug and alcohol addictions - none of this would suggest an especially entertaining film, but it provides ample sustenance for our attention. Once the plot pot is stirred, though, it must be attended to near-constantly, and much of what has kept Flight on its feet for the first hour becomes a nuisance in the second. Kelly Reilly has such a potency as an actor, but her scenes eventually become annoyances to the viewer, needlessly distracting, even if dramatically satisfying. Propulsion is regained in a scene set at a crucial hearing towards the end, and the lead actors are all convincing and give smart, varied performances, but the many mistakes drain Flight of its effectiveness - consider Whip's addictions, depicted as pure, simplistic, easy to understand and easy to combat; distilled down enough that they can function as just one element in his story, when they could have been the entire story themselves. And the final scene is sickly in its sanitised optimism. Such a shame that Zemeckis so often yields to commercialism and sentimentality - he establishes some subtly irregular moments within an audaciously unconventional structure, but largely shoots them in a bland, uncreative style that diminishes his own inventiveness and technical prowess.