American Gangster

Written at the time of the film's release...

"That's What's Wrong with America. You can't Find the Heart of Anything to Stick the Knife In"

American Gangster tells the story of Frank Lucas, who, for a time in the 60's and 70's, ran the most successful narcotics operation in Harlem. The film is based on a "New York" magazine article from an interview with the real-life Lucas, so it must be based on fact, right?*

Ridley Scott's played fast and loose with facts before (1492, Black Hawk Down), so one should take the credit "Based on a True Story" with a kilo of salt (or a pound of cocaine). 

 

But, that aside, how is the movie?

It tells the parallel stories of Lucas' rise in power on the Harlem streets by "cutting out the middle-man" smuggling in raw opium from Thailand, and manufacturing a concoction called "Blue Magic" that had twice the potency, but at half the cost, with the story of the cop who eventually busted him, a down on his luck detective named Richie Roberts who's too honest to be trusted by the New York Police. 

While Lucas starts to make his version of the American Dream, Roberts continually has his legs knocked out from under him--his wife leaves him, takes his kid, he struggles with classes to better himself (public speaking, law), his partner turns junkie, and implicates him in a murder. The movie drips with irony at every turn, constantly showing the easy path of Crime and the tough road of Law Enforcement, that recalls that epitome of the thesis—"The French Connection."**

In a montage of Thanksgiving, Lucas is shown with his entire family at a stereotypical Thanksgiving spread (and in one of the more heavy-handed of Scott's directorial choices frames it like Norman Rockwell's "Freedom from Want" painting, while Roberts, makes a cold sandwich of canned turkey-spread and potato chips over the kitchen sink. But then the director re-ups it by showing junkies shooting up between their toes in grimy bathrooms, and a mother passed out in bed, while her child is screaming in the room. Whatever glamour Lucas may enjoy, Scott is particular about showing the cost in human misery. No one gets off "Scott"-free.

Washington takes aim at a rival...

...and it's Idris Elba!
Sometimes the tables are turned. Lucas occasionally has troubles in the operation, and however much he may espouse core-values of honesty and integrity, the very nature of his business starts to rot his dreams for his family. And the more Roberts investigates, the closer he comes to his target, the more his team of "Untouchables" gel, and his investigation and life begin to come into focus.

Ridley Scott misses as much as he hits. For every good film (The Duellists, Alien, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise), there is a terrible one (Legend, 1492, Someone To Watch Over Me, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year), and some that have just enough quality in them (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Matchstick Men) that his directorial brio can compensate for weaknesses and messy scripts. But here, he has a cracker-jack script by Steve Zaillian, no worries about creating "a world" out of whole cloth, and a stunning cast that includes Clarence Williams III (uncredited), Joe Morton, Armand Assante, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., the magnificent Ruby Dee, Ted Levine, Roger Bart, Carla Gugino, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and top-lined by Russell Crowe, but especially Denzel Washington. When these two heavy-weights get together, their scenes crackle with invention. Everybody does incredibly lived-in work.

And nobody less than the director. This is Ridley Scott's best film in ages. At times the details get a bit murky, but Scott does so to keep a multi-faceted story moving at a brisk pace. And he pulls off some amazing little camera tricks that stun, and some of the most unpretentious action-sequences put to film. Those action sequences are rough stuff--the film begins with the immolation and point-blank gun-down of a mob rival--and the junkie sequences are harrowing, so one should be warned. But missing it would be missing a great film.

* Merely a casual glance at the internet will disprove a lot of myth from fact. Lucas did not work for crime boss "Bumpy" Johnson for 15 years, but five (he's been in prison before), he was not with him when he died, did not marry "Miss Puerto Rico," or own "Small's" nightclub. And that's just the start for Lucas. The real Roberts is a bit miffed that to attract Crowe, they beefed up his part by making him more of a loser. Lucas admits that the film is "about 20% true."

 

** The names "Eddie Egan" and "Sonny Grosso" are invoked early on, and Crowe's Roberts employs a foot-chase under the "El" that figured so prominently in the movie.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

A Murder of Crows

or

"...Black, Deep Desires"

 

Joel Coen steps away from "The Coen Brothers" partnership to present his own version of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth (or "The Scottish Play" if you expect a sandbag to fall from the rafters). There's nothing to fear here: brother Ethan usually writes their stuff and Joel directs with some intersection of duties between the two. But, here, brother Joel already has a collaborator and the material has been proven time and time again (and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow), despite the superstitions that have hovered like crows over every stage production.

 

There have been so many filmed presentations of "Macbeth" and re-imagined scenarios in which it takes place that one wonders what Coen, taking the text, would do with it. He doesn't try to anachronise the story, moving it to Haiti or setting it in Nazi Germany, but keeps it in 16th century Inverness. Presentation of that historical "Macbeth" recalls the way Orson Welles did it in 1948—stage-bound, Academy ratio, black and white, with an eye towards German Expressionism.

It begins with a shot straight up into the sky, the wind blowing, smoke and clouds combining and birds gyrating into the sky. Nature is on alert and moving because man is up to something unnatural—a battle has just been fought. Meanwhile a lone figure (Kathryn Hunter) scuttles—there is no other word for it—across a dirt path in the fog, muttering to itself and to others. This is Coen's interpretation of Shakespeare's witches, one being, recalling Andy Serkis' Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, but not a CGI creation, but one of theatricality, with twisted limbs like a bird's and a hoarse croak of a voice that feels like nails on a file. The performance is weird without being traditionally spooky and sets you on edge for what is to come.

What is to come is a professional interpretation without too much weirdness. Hunter is a tough act to follow, and she is the highlight in a film that should be full of them. I say that, but it needs to be said with some context. "Macbeth" is a much performed play, both in theater and the cinema (every decade has one film of it, it seems), and, like a symphony—or other piece of music—it can be played in differing manners even if maintaining the ascribed tempo. I might have a "perfect" rendition of the piece (and other listeners another idea of what that might entail) and notice the change of "attack" or emphasis in certain sections. It comes down to interpretation, and "Macbeth" is just as susceptible to those variations.

Like the 1948 Welles version, this one depends on less being more (although Coen cites Carl Theodor Dreyer more than Welles), the backdrops shadowed or cloaked in mist and blocks of perfectly proportioned masonry with less emphasis on grit—as, say, Polanski's version—and the figures walking through them are like mice in a maze. Predestination has created their paths and their choice is to simply follow through or not. It's a curiously unpopulated world, the only crowds being the line of soldiers set to attack Macbeth's castle, hemmed in by the "Birnam wood" of the witches' prophecy, the rest being stark spaces shadowed by the blackest blacks.

Through these spaces, the characters pace, for the most part sheltered from the wild outside that knows no geometry of straight lines, but intrudes—once the Macbeths screw their courage to the sticking place by regicide—not only by physical presences, but by the sound of that nature booming (not just knocking) to be let in, like consciences made tactile.

The acting is great throughout, with Brendan Gleeson, Alex Hassell, Stephen Root (!!), Moses Ingram, and Frances McDormand all breathing new life into the texts, bridging that Elizabethan gap of Shakespearean prose by the sheer force of performance. Denzel Washington does well (as well), bringing a maturity to the role rather than—as in some versions—as a walking personification of overweening ambition. It is only in his interpretation of the "Out, brief candle" speech that leaves a little something to be desired at that critical junction of the play. 

Up until then, Washington's Macbeth is a pragmatist, slightly world-weary and seems beaten down—he has just come from a war, after all. What is most interesting is that both Macbeths in this iteration are older, childless (so no chances of succession), and obviously have seen chances for advancement taken away from them in the past, and that, now, with this hope given thought by a supernatural origin, are almost desperate to take advantage of it, lest it pass from them one last time. Once he is king, and things start to fall apart, one would think there would be more shock, more realization that he might have been duped by the very forces that emboldened him. But, that's not there. Instead, it seems he's returned to the world-weariness at the beginning of the film—which is inconvenient as he still has much to fight. It feels false, and is missing a sense of bitter desperation that will carry him through the inevitable end.

Still, it's a beautiful, often mystical film to watch and listen to. And it's always a welcome break to just take in Shakespeare to relieve oneself of the mundane nature of everyday-speak, and glory in the poetry and precision of his story-telling.

Unstoppable (2010)

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Braking of Pelham 4-5-6"
or
"So...Now What the Hell Do We Do?"

Tony Scott's last film was the very "meh" update of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 with Denzel Washington as a harried subway supervisor on the day that crazy terrorist John Travolta decides to take a train (and its passengers) hostage. The movie was hysterical in the "hair-on-fire" way (and not in the "ha-ha" way) where the earlier Joseph Sargent-directed version was cleverly funny, the film-makers leaching colors out of the picture and backing it with a hip-hop beat. It was a dull and lifeless movie with all sorts of editing tricks and false drama trying to make the thing seem more like an action movie than the material had the capacity to fulfill. So, what you got was a movie that felt like it was suffering from inappropriate  'roid-rage.

Perhaps they should have skipped Pelham and gone straight to Unstoppable (called that because, presumably, Andrey Konchalovskiy already made Runaway Train in 1985!). Based on the "Crazy 8's" incident in 2001, where an engineer-less train—train 777, making it, apparently, that much closer to "the Choo-Choo of the Beast"—carrying dangerous chemicals (the "molten phenol" used in the film), moved unimpeded and under power at speeds up to 48 mph, it has, like Pelham, been ginned up with drama and death and derring-do, and the inevitable "countdown to disaster" that could end Scranton, Pennsylvania as we know it.

"Hello, do you read?"

Everything that can go wrong can and does. The train is under power due to an operator error—he was under pressure from co-workers to move a heavily laden train quickly, and left the cab to try and move a track-switcher—with its brakes disconnected, on a collision course with another filled with school-kids on a "train-safety" field-trip (Oooooh, the irony!), but there seem to be enough Pennsylvanians on the track that you suspect it was "Go Stand on a Railroad Track Day" in the state (at least, the film-makers kept it free of nuns, widows, orphans and puppies—although one shot of a raccoon crossing the track with the train hurtling at us in the background provoked an inappropriate fit of the giggles). It's carrying the afore-mentioned molten phynol "used in the manufacture of glue"—and in case we don't get it (a problem with this movie) it is reiterated that it is "very toxic, highly volatile" and the place the train will most likely derail is in the middle of Scranton on a curve that overlooks (conveniently) a large collection of fuel oil storage tanks. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is bad city planning.

"Yeah, I read. I CAN read. Are you talking about genre?"

On top of that, the corporate heads irresponsibly want to stop it in the least expensive way possible, meaning that it probably won't work, and the two engineers also on a collision course with "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building" consist of a bitter company vet and a kid on his first day on the job with a court appearance that he has to make.

This is one over-loaded train. Scott pulls out all the stops—he doesn't have any brakes, either—skip-and ramp-editing the train footage to move it faster, swooping around the trains to give everything more momentum, constantly changing perspective to keep one ill at ease (until the two Mutt and Jeff engineers—Denzel Washington and Chris Pine—share a laugh—and a frame—half-way through the film, their conversations consist of separate shots of each speaking their lines from opposite perspectives of the engine compartment), it is a busy, busy movie. Credit to Scott, he keeps you informed what's going on so you never get lost in the spinning images. If anything, there is too much information—needlessly identifying various locations at the beginning when they're all 200 miles of each other, and not trusting any piece of information to not be re-iterated (after a terse conversation with the corporate HQ, do we need to have the gal in charge (Rosario Dawson) call her callous supervisor "an asshole?"). The entire plot is summed up a couple times during the movie ("So, what you're telling me is....") to the point where you're feeling slightly talked down to. Still, it is a bit of a fun ride for all the lapses in passenger-service.

"What is this, a book-club? Stop the damn train!"

One funny aspect of the film is its constant thrusting of Fox News coverage of the event (the film is a 20th Century Fox release and both entities are holdings of News Corp.). But it may be a bit of a miscalculation: the circling news helicopters buzzing the train seem to not only distract, but also interfere with the rescue efforts, to the point where they're actually one of the things hampering the struggles of the people to resolve the situation. Fox runs the risk of making one of their own divisions look poor in their attempt to cross-promote, derailing their own efforts throughout the film.

The Taking of Pelham 123

Written at the time of the film's release...

Or is that re-release?

"If You Don't Need it, Leave it!"
or
Hip-Hopping Right off the Tracks 

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" was a 1973 best-selling novel by John Godey that was snapped up for the movies almost immediately. The resulting 1974 film by the efficient Joseph Sargent benefited from an energetically entertaining script by Peter Stone and good performances by Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Stone (1776, Charade), being a student of Hitchcock, understood that a good thriller is more fun if you can enjoy it, rather than identify with it, and his script bristled with a sarcastic brio that played with the rich ethnicity of New Yawk. It was filmed again for television in 1999 with Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio that nodded to advances in technology a bit, but lacked energy and suspense.  

There was no need for a further sequel, let alone one that would cost upwards of $100 million dollars—most of which seems to have gone to New York location taxes and helicopter rentals—but the Scott brothers evidently felt the need, this one directed by brother Tony in the same needlessly overt style that characterized his last few pictures. Scott's direction has always emphasized flash over substance, and here the film unnecessarily employs MTV cutting, streak shots, ramp-edits and cutesy sound design (a cranked up helicopter shot of a dawn New York skyline punctuates the sun blasting between skyscrapers with first two subway whooshes, than a horn) just to establish location.* This new version of The Taking of Pelham 123** is all over the top, set to a hip-hop beat, and it's only at the end that it's clear why Scott is being so aggressive with these techniques—he'll need them again to convey a sense of speed for a subway car supposedly out of control, but in the location shots looks soothingly like it would never leave the tracks. 

And if Stone's 1974 screenplay is an example of subtlety, the script by Brian Helgeland (and uncredited David Koepp) is a chunk of concrete, dropping so many f-bombs that it passes for humor in a script devoid of it—one of the very first examples of dialogue is a string of them in a sentence devoid of any meaning, but is merely an example of macho puffery, representing in microcosm both the script and film. Ethnicity is also made a factor in this script, but where Stone's punctured attitudes and stereotypes, in the 2009 script ethnicity defines you and can be used against you (and yet tries to imprint the message that you can "adapt"—interesting. Mixed message, and racistly judgmental...but interesting). 

The performances are credible, although I've always had problems seeing John Travolta as a bad guy (thoughtless, yes, but never deliberately malicious). Denzel Washington sinks into his role as everyman, caught in a circumstance he didn't walk to work foreseeing and doing his best to punt. James Gandolfini portrays a subway-riding mayor and the actor shrugs power. John Turturro has a smallish role as a police negotiator, and the highpoint of the film for me is a long held shot of Turturro reacting to the death of a hostage—his eyes portraying shock, and behind them simultaneously trying to pull himself out and consider his next step. 

The cumulative effect is numbness and dumbness. A firefight between perps surrounded by a ring of cops turns into a multi-camera squirt-a-thon nightmare. It looks impressive, you start to wonder how none of the police shoot any of the cops opposite them. For all the attempts to update, The Taking of Pelham 123 is a downgrade in quality, suspense and effectiveness. 

Let's see, the Scott brothers managed to mess up "The Andromeda Strain," and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," what other 70's thriller can they destroy?*** 

* In the "Rail Control Center," digital effects are used to make the display board more like a video game with zoomed graphics both in the display, and created for dramatic uses by cutting out little windows in the film itself. 

** Criminy, even the name is simplified and spoon-fed, lest anyone not "get" it. 

*** That question is already answered: Ridley Scott is shooting Robin Hood (2021 note: we'll post this next week...as well as another Denzel Washington "train" movie). Interesting story: the original script, called "Nottingham," focused on the Sheriff of Nottingham, caught in a struggle between a corrupt King and anarchists with the people's support. Russell Crowe was signed to star. In the interim, the script morphed into Robin being the Sheriff of Nottingham (?), now it's back to the old traditional—and umpteenth—version of "Robin Hood," and Maid Marion are the good guys and the King and Sheriff are bad guys. We've seen it before. Again, the question is: why? Probably because Hollywood can't get enough of the delicious irony of making money on a story about a guy who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor." 

It's too bad—I'd have liked to have seen "Nottingham," not another retread.

The Little Things (2020)

The Last Act Will Kill Ya

or

"When I see a sunrise or thunderstorm or dew on the ground, yes, I think there's a God. When I see all this, I think he's long past giving a shit."

"I just remember really liking crime dramas and psychological thrillers, but also feeling that especially some of the ones in the ’80s had become a little paint-by-numbers. I would like all the clues and the misdirects and the complications, and then you’d get to the third act where the bad guy is identified and the good guys give chase. And usually there’s some kind of action set piece, and then there’s a face-off and the good guy heroically defeats the bad guy.

And I thought, 'Why does the third act have to be less interesting than the first two?' So I wanted to see if I could have something that unravels in a way that is non-formulaic but also satisfying."

John Lee Hancock Interview with "The Wrap"

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: Black Lives Matter. The problems come when people think that white lives matter more than black lives (or brown lives or Asian lives or Tongan lives); that problem comes from a streak of meanness that runs through American society (or any society), especially when individuals are grouped into blocks and treated as statistics or rules of thumb or metrics—prejudices, all. People are not numbers or monolithic lumps; that's lazy thinking making the job easier for statisticians and bigots.

Alright. That's who I am, and I only say that because there's enough of a Big Stink on the internet about whether "it's an appropriate time" for there to be a controversial police drama. Forget that the participants are very respected actors of different ethnicities (if one has to notice such things). If people were waiting for "an appropriate time," things would never be made. The controversy is "Click-bait" sensitivity—all done to generate "hits" or "likes", just another kind of statistic— and it's sensitivity of the worst kind.

John Lee Hancock's new thriller, The Little Things, is a police drama about police trying to solving a cold case that has recently warmed up to the boiling point. The only blue is the thin blue line and the only red is the blood of the victims, washing over it. It is about police making mistakes while trying to do the right thing. And it is about the toll the job takes if you're a person of morals, having to deal with the public at the worst moments of their lives, invariably. It's hard for the moral compass to keep to true North if your impression is that Society is going South.

Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a Deputy ("I'm a Dep!") out in the scrubland of  Kern County, California, doing small-time calls that are basically nuisances. You'd never know he used to be a L.A. police detective with the highest resolve rate in the force. And he's more than a little reluctant to go back to his old hunting grounds to pick up some evidence that's being analyzed for them by the Big City Lab boys (and girls). It's a matter of Unfinished Business. Well, file it as a Cold Case. That business resulted in Deacon being suspended, getting divorced, and having a heart attack. Murder can kill you.

Going back is like a bad High School reunion. There's the cautious "you're back" responses, the pointed joshing...the side-eyes. People are glad to see you're alive...just not happy you're in close proximity. As for Deacon, he walks around like people are expecting him to have a case of cooties or something, but the old precinct still has the same feeling of a Boys Club that he no longer belongs to. Only there's a new kid in town. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) is lead detective for a serial murder case and he's sharp-suited, sharp-witted, and has enough control that a press conference is just another ritual. He knows Deacon, knows his record (as much as anybody official knows) and is sufficiently in command that having Deacon as another set of eyes might be handy. They can at least compare notes.

The crime scene looks like a ritual homicide: the victim was a hooker, slaughtered, posed. The two detectives go to their separate corners and go about their own particular business. Deacon discovers that there's an apartment across the way where it looks like somebody was watching everything when it was going down. Meeting up, Deacon and Baxter compare notes—Deacon thinks it has something to do with the case that got him suspended, the one he never solved. The M.O.'s certainly are similar in how the bodies have been purposely posed. That might be the end of it.

That is, if you believe in short movies. Baxter learns from his superior that Deacon hasn't gone back to Kern, that he actually has taken some sick days and is probably still in the area. He has. He is. And he's taken a crummy apartment, bought some used clothes and is living around the area where the last murder occurred. What they don't know is that he's not sleeping—the ghosts of the victims are keeping him awake. He's taken evidence shots from the crime files just to make sure.

Another murder happens. Another girl goes missing. Somebody's busy and the pressure is on lead Baxter to get answers. He turns to Deacon, who's been digging around, scouring for clues, and after harassing a peeping tom (and his subsequent suicide), they focus on Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a repairman working in the area. Sparma is straight out of creepsville (Leto gives him a wild-eyed glee, emaciated—but with a beer-gut—and the gait of an old man), staring at any police activity like he knows he's being watched and challenges it.

Deacon and Sparma conduct a little cat-and-mouse gamesmanship—both seeing themselves as the cat—when the dep' does some tailing of him on the freeway, only to find that Sparma is watching him with equal attention. The FBI is being called in to take over the investigation, and Deacon and Baxter decide to pull him in for questioning, at the same time that a woman who had previously been stalked on the highway comes in to report the incident, and, by now, the two detectives have a system down to question and observe in order to intimidate suspects.

But, Sparma is a cool customer. He knows the drill—and knows the potential for drilling—and he taunts and questions and goes against expectations. He just seems wrong. Rather than acting—or not acting—like a guilty party, he's blithe about the questioning, wanting to know more about procedure, and enjoying looking at the victims' forensics pictures. He's so nakedly transparent without admitting anything that the cops have nothing to go on. Just their instincts that Sparma is a "bad joe." But, that's not enough reason to arrest him and not enough to charge him. They can't crack him. So, they release him and start doubling down looking for evidence.

Along comes Act 3, which is where Hancock attempts to subvert the genre's "catch-'em-in-the-act"/chase/shoot-'em-up tropes. It is not entirely successful, unless you buy into that the triad of good-guys/bad-guys all think they're smarter than everybody else and so do things that an audience will think is just bad judgment. Everybody's a little too cocky, everybody thinks they're up on the game, subsumed in illusory superiority.

And that's when "the little things" get you.

It's an interesting concept, slightly dumbed down for a police thriller. But, the basic concept of being haunted by the past and your failures is a good spin on the old cop/young cop cliché. The old dog teaches the new dog survival skills; the DNA is deeply embedded there, but without the irony of the lessons being subverted by reality. After searching for demons so long, the cops can't stop seeing the demons and, finally, become them. The lesson is no demons. And no angels, either.

There's some subtle stuff going on, that may not permeate casual popcorn-crunching. And Hancock tosses out visual red herrings, like religious iconography, that merely seem to be part of the landscape rather than being relevant. The time-setting of the 90's would appear to be one of those red-herrings, if the absence of cell-phones weren't so integral to making the plot work. And he does nice little subverting tricks: when the cops are investigating a crime-scene, all the lights are out due to a power-outtage and a big shock comes when the lights suddenly turn ON; he does a deft transition from day to night with the movement of a car's side-mirror. These are just little things that turn a cliché on its ear.

But, the movie is full of "little things," begging to be paid attention to, lest they escalate to everlasting regret. 

* Hancock wrote it in 1993 and Spielberg was at one point attached to direct but passed finding the material "too dark"...and that it was mighty close to the 1991 release of Silence of the Lambs. Eastwood, who'd directed Hancock's script of A Perfect World, was also attached, at one point.

Flight

Written at the time of the film's touch-down...

 

Flying Inverted
or
Cracking the Whip

It's been years since Robert Zemeckis made a live-action film (the last being Cast Away, all the way back in 2000, the time being taken up with his three motion capture animated films) and this one, Flight, is an interesting choice, quite unlike anything the director has done, but falling in line with his other films about people being left up in the air about fundamental choices in their lives.  

Captain Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot on cruise-control. Unfortunately, it's a path that will ultimately crash and burn. An alcoholic and coke-head, he'll do a layover with a stew (in this instance, Nadine Velazquez), get wasted, and then to get himself #1 on the runway will do a line, so he can do the "pilot walk" to the cabin—all confidence and casualness for the launching of "souls" into the wild-blue yonder.

Even before he takes off, Whip is flying. But his nonchalance and bon homie gets him through, even through a difficult take-off through low turbulence. He pushes the plane, but clears the clouds early and restores order to the flight, then settles back to cadge some booze samples, smuggle them into his orange juice and catch some sleep. He wakes up just in time for a crisis: the plane bangs, then goes into a steep dive that terrifies the passengers and crew (and me) and merely gives Whip a much needed shot of adrenaline. The only way he can take the plane from pile-driving into the ground is to bank it until he's flying upside down, then skimming the Earth until he can find a clear place to land, then cork-screw right side up and ditching for a landing.

Six people die, two on the crew.  Whittaker wakes up in the hospital with torn ligaments in his knees, lacerations around his eye and no idea how he got there.  First visitor is the pilot's union rep (Bruce Greenwood), then the NTSB who are all "just the facts" and deferential. Next is Whip's "connection" (John Goodman), a Dr. Feelgood who waltzes in (to the tune of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil;" Whip's is "Feelin' Alright"), tells Whip he's a hero, that reporters are hunting him, and criticizes the doctors' choice in pain-killers: "Amateur night!" All Whip can think about is getting out, but it's not as simple as that. He's under investigation for the crash (his simple response is "it was a broken plane"), has been lawyered up with an attorney (Don Cheadle) who doesn't like him, thinks he's a creep, but is going to do his job, and on top of it all, Whittaker must deal with a pissed-off ex-wife and a son who doesn't know him, and has no intentions to.

In the hospital, he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly, you'll remember her as Dr. Watson's wife in the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies), who's recovering from an overdose and not in a good way.  Whip is attracted—she's female and weak, which seem to be all that's required—and he whisks her away to his family's small farm and failed crop-dusting business in rural Georgia.  He's already ditched all the alcohol, but after a couple days, he's back in the bag, drinking himself into oblivion while Nicole goes to AA meetings.  Whip visits, too, but when things get personal, he takes off.

Washington is brilliant in all of this, showing both the pilot's strengths and pitiful weaknesses. His scenes of bleary drunkenness feel real and incomprehensible, and one watches his constant crashing after attempts to bring himself up are painful to watch. The balance of the film is Whip's cart-wheeling from sober to sloshed, his best instincts superseded by his addictions—a man in constant denial, addicted to lying (and pulling himself out of a crisis) and risk-taking as much as to the hooch. It's a rough ride to be a part of and even observe, Whittaker constantly pulling himself out of his dives, then going into another tailspin, and you just know the only time he'll level off is when he crashes.  The parallels between flight and addiction are obvious (how far can you push yourself before everything breaks and if you survive, how much further can you push?) and audiences who gripe about all the action being in the first 20 minutes, may not realize that they're watching a parallel course throughout the rest of the movie, only far more personal, and maybe (hopefully) not as relatable.  

It is a tough, emotional roller-coaster to be a part of, but everything is of a piece. At one point, Cheadle's lawyer puts it succinctly: "Death demands responsibility," and responsibility is one thing Whittaker has never known. The old Irwin Allen disaster movie posters used to scream "Who Will Survive?" The same applies here, even if the audience-grabbing disaster only occurs at the beginning, and we white-knuckle it to see who'll surface from the rubble. This is a smart, troubling, painful movie to watch. But, you can't turn away, either in horror or fascination.

Whip Whittaker's sobering flight is just the first leg on the itinerary.