Director: Robert Zemeckis
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.0
A booze-bag and coke-fiend - but fantastic pilot! - named Whip (Denzel Washington) pulls an amazing aerial stunt by flipping over a malfunctioning plane heading from Florida to Hotlanta and landing in a field (saving the vast majority on board) - he's regarded as a hero but his drinking and recreational drug use soon come under intense scrutiny. The first half-hour, cinematically speaking, is basically genius, and the crash landing is simply intense moviemaking ... except what follows is a long diatribe about Saving Yourself, Realizing You Need Help and Going On The Path To Recovery (there's even a handy-dandy cancer patient to show up and talk about Fate): Denzel keeps drinking and drinking, his buddy/dealer Harling (John Goodman) pops up as "comic relief" - and as a deliverer of cocaine to help Denzel "level out" - and he's eventually interrogated by Melissa Leo, who gives Denzel his opportunity to confess he has a problem: it's all one glorified intervention. Making matters worse is Zemeckis' penchant for using classic songs as the characters move in slow motion down hallways and Washington Oscaring-It-Up as a Flawed Man in search of Redemption. He allegedly Sees the Light in prison. Good for him.
