Flight might be the most underrated movie of the year, to my mind. Much has been made of Denzel Washington’s performance as the heroic and destructive Captain Whip Whitaker, and rightly so. He portrays the delusional nature of severe addiction in a way that I had not witnessed before, playing off our preconceived impressions of someone who seems to have it all together like the great Denzel. His spiral into binge drinking and drug use is more devastating because of this.
But director Robert Zemeckis deserves enormous credit here. In an interview with Charlie Rose he describes how he had a fairly different film in mind, but upon seeing Washington’s performance and feeling the rhythm of the character as he was brought to life, he realized he had to completely change the way he wanted to cut the film so it lined up with the strange rhythm this character brought with him. I thought that was an excellent way to describe why this film feels like it’s working so well as we’re watching it, and may provide an explanation for why more rigid and stubborn directors often produce work that functions as though not everyone is on the same page. Zemeckis won’t get a lot of recognition for his work here, and that’s a shame.
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