flight movie review

My name is Whip, and I’m an alcoholic

After opening with one of the most terrifying flying scenes I’ve witnessed, in which an airplane is saved by being flown upside down, Robert Zemeckis ‘ “Flight” segues into a brave and tortured performance by Denzel Washington — one of his very best. Not often does a movie character make such a harrowing personal journey that keeps us in deep sympathy all of the way.

Washington plays Whip Whitaker, a veteran commercial airlines pilot who over the years has built up a shaky tolerance for quantities of alcohol and cocaine that would be lethal for most people. At the film opens, he’s finishing an all-night party with a friendly flight attendant named Katerina ( Nadine Velazquez ) and jolts himself back into action with two lines of cocaine. His co-pilot ( Brian Geraghty ) eyes him suspiciously, but Whip projects poise and authority from behind his dark aviator glasses.

Their flight takes off in a disturbing rainstorm and encounters the kind of turbulence that has the co-pilot crying out, “Oh, Lord!” But Whip powers them at high speed into an area of clear sky, before a mechanical malfunction sends the aircraft into an uncontrollable nosedive. Zemeckis and his team portray the terror in the cabin in stomach-churning style. Acting on instinct, seeming cool as ice, the veteran pilot inverts the plane to halt its descent, and it flies level upside-down until he rights it again to glide into a level crash-landing in an open field.

The field, as it happens, is next to a little church, and the way Zemeckis portrays an outdoor baptism on the ground below captures the hyper-realism with which I imagine we notice things when we think we’re about to die. Only six people do die in the crash, and Whittaker is hailed as a hero.

Will this close call bring an end to his drinking? He retreats to his grandfather’s farm where he was raised, pours out all his booze and is dry for a time — until he’s told by his union representative ( Bruce Greenwood ) and his lawyer ( Don Cheadle ), that blood tests show he was flying drunk. A government hearing is fraught with hazard (he faces a possible life sentence). Meanwhile, he is befriended by a woman named Nicole ( Kelly Reilly ), who he met in the hospital, and she takes him to an AA meeting, but the program is not for him.

It becomes clear that intoxication is more important to Whip than anything else; it cost him a marriage and the respect of his son. One of the most effective things in Washington’s performance is the way he puts up an impassive facade to conceal his defiant addiction. “No one else could have landed that plane!” he insists, and indeed tests in a flight simulator back him up. The fact remains that he was stoned.

One of the most gripping scenes takes place in a hotel room where Whittaker is being held essentially under guard for the week before his official hearing. At a crucial moment, his drug supplier Harling Mays ( John Goodman ) turns up, marching toward camera in one of a series of garish Hawaiian shirts, ready to battle a crisis. I don’t have any idea if cocaine can snap you back from a killer hangover, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Denzel Washington is one of the most sympathetic and rock-solid of actors, and it’s effective here how his performance never goes over the top but instead is grounded on obsessive control. There are many scenes inviting emotional displays. A lesser actor might have wanted to act them out. Washington depends on his eyes, his manner and a gift for projecting inner emotion. In the way it meets every requirement of a tricky plot, this is an ideal performance.

Among the supporting performances, Don Cheadle projects guarded motivations, Greenwood is a loyal friend, Goodman seems like a handy medic, and Brian Geraghty’s panic in the co-pilot’s seat underlines the horror. “Flight,” a title with more than one meaning, is strangely the first live-action feature in 12 years by Robert Zemeckis, who seemed committed to stop-motion animation (“ Beowulf ,” “ The Polar Express ,” “ Disney's A Christmas Carol “). It is nearly flawless. I can think of another final line of dialogue for Whip Whitaker’s character (“My name is Whip, and I’m an alcoholic”), but that’s just me.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Nadine Velazquez as Katerina
• Bruce Greenwood as Charlie
• Brian Geraghty as Ken
• John Goodman as Harling
• Denzel Washington as Whip
• Don Cheadle as Hugh
• John Gatins

Directed by

• Robert Zemeckis

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Flight: new york film festival review.

Denzel Washington stars in the Robert Zemeckis drama about an airline pilot who saves dozens of lives but faces prison because of drugs in his system.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Denzel Washington stars in director Robert Zemeckis’ "Flight," which receives a gala screening Oct. 18 in Abu Dhabi.

After 12 years spent mucking about in the motion capture playpen, Robert Zemeckis parachutes back to where he belongs — in big-time, big-star, live-action filmmaking — with Flight . A gritty, full-bodied character study about a man whose most exceptional deed may, ironically, have resulted from his most flagrant flaw, this absorbing drama provides Denzel Washington with one of his meatiest, most complex roles, and he flies with it. World premiering as the closing night attraction at the 50th New York Film Festival, the Paramount release will be warmly welcomed by audiences in search of thoughtful, powerful adult fare upon its Nov. 2 opening.

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Onscreen for nearly the entire running time, Washington has found one of the best parts of his career in Whip Whitaker, a middle-aged pilot for a regional Southern airline who knows his stuff and can still get away with behaving half his age. In the film’s raw opening scene, he’s lying in bed in Orlando at 7 a.m. after an all-night booze, drugs and sex marathon with a sexy flight attendant. With a little help from some white powder, he reassures her they will make their 9 o’clock flight for Atlanta.

The Bottom Line Denzel Washington excels as a pilot whose heroics hide a very dark side.

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The gripping 20-minute interlude that follows has in every way been brilliantly orchestrated by Zemeckis and will mesmerize and terrify audiences in a manner that will make the film widely talked about, a must-see for many and perhaps a must-avoid for a few. The 102 passengers strap in for what could be a bumpy flight; the weather looks awful. Rain is pelting down and the sky is dark, but it’s all in a day’s work for Whip, who settles into the cockpit and greets a new co-pilot ( Brian Geraghty ), while also sneaking two bottles’ worth of on-board vodka into his orange juice.

With his night’s companion Katerina ( Nadine Velazquez ) working the passenger compartment, Whit zooms up into the clouds, shaking up the passengers and scaring the co-pilot as he rams at top speed toward a pocket of clear sky. Having achieved momentary calm, Whit actually falls asleep at the controls, but not for long; the jet loses its hydraulics and suddenly plunges into an uncontrolled descent, its engines on fire. After lowering the landing gear and dumping fuel, Whip freaks everyone out and creates total chaos onboard by inverting the plane, manually forcing it to fly upside-down to achieve some stability on the way down before righting the ship at the last minute to attempt an emergency landing in a field.

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This breath-shortening sequence is eye-poppingly realistic, with cutting Eisenstein would have admired, right down to the exquisite details of Jehovah’s witnesses scrambling to get out of the way on the ground as the plane’s wing clips the steeple of their rural church. Miraculously, the plane lands more or less intact, although six people die. For his part, Whip is hospitalized with minor injuries. His daring and ingenuity having saved most of the passengers from certain death, he becomes an immediate national hero.

But this is not a role Whip is keen to embrace. Depressed to learn that Katerina was among those killed, he’s visited by old flying buddy and now pilot’s union rep Charlie Anderson ( Bruce Greenwood ), as well as by his Lebowski-world drug dealer Harling Mays ( John Goodman ), whom he instructs to keep the vodka away. At the same time, Whip meets red-headed Nicole ( Kelly Reilly ), an addict hospitalized after an o.d., with whom he develops a certain affinity.

Anxious to avoid the lurking media, Whip slips away to his family farm to hide out. The property belonged to his grandfather; his father’s Cessna, in which Whip learned to fly, is still in the barn and the cabinets are full of booze, which he methodically pours out. If he could stay here forever, unmolested and unnoticed, you suspect he would. But a tempest of trouble awaits him in the real world, as he learns what he had to already know: Toxicological tests have revealed the booze and coke in his system at the time of the crash, which could result in serious prison time.

VIDEO: Denzel Washington’s ‘Flight’ Trailer Hits 

From this point on, the original screenplay by John Gatins ( Coach Carter, Dreamer, Real Steel ) closely charts the ins and outs and ups and downs of Whip’s addiction, a struggle he shares part-time with Nicole. Unlike him, she has nothing to show for her life, as well as no prospects unless she shapes up once and for all. When Whip learns what’s in store for him legally, he hits the bottle again just as Nicole goes on the wagon, which doesn’t stop them from having a brief liaison. Her AA sessions are not for him.

Whip also resists the help of attorney Hugh Lang ( Don Cheadle ), a stiffly humorless man who’s obviously good at his job, as he paves the way for his client to get off if he behaves himself. That, then, becomes the major question as he approaches a big public hearing before the chief inquisitor ( Melissa Leo ), along with whether Whip can cut through his layers of self-protection and denial to finally confront his devils and the truth about himself.

The close scrutiny of Whip’s internal currents cuts two ways, on one hand investing the drama with a deeply explored and complex central character, while on the other weighing it down a bit too much with familiar addiction issues for which the possible solutions are ultimately limited and clear-cut. The script commendably advances the notion that Whip had the cojones to make his bold move to save the plane because he was high but then perhaps prolongs the search for exactly how he’ll have to pay the price. At 139 minutes, the film takes a bit longer than necessary to do what it needs to do.

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But Washington keeps it alive and real at all times as a man who, a failed marriage and an estranged son aside, would seem to have had things his own way most of his life and has never been forced to take a clear-eyed look at himself. The actor hits notes that are tricky and nuanced and that he’s never played before, contributing to a large, layered performance that defines the film.

Reilly (Sherlock Holmes), Greenwood, Goodman and Cheadle are all solid in functional supporting roles. As a live-action director, Zemeckis hasn’t lost a step during his long layoff; even though most of the settings are prosaic and even unphotogenic — hotel and hospital rooms, downscale dwellings, conference rooms — he and cinematographer Don Burgess deliver bold, well conceived images that flatter the actors. The exceptional and seamless visual effects for the traumatic flight sequence make that experience linger and reverberate throughout the entire film, just as it does for the characters who lived through it.

Venue: New York Film Festival (closing night) Opens: November 2 (Paramount) Production: Image Movers, Parkes + MacDonald Prods Cast: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, Brian Geraghty, Tamara Tunie, Nadine Velazquez, Peter Gerety, Garcelle Beauvais, Melissa Leo Director: Robert Zemeckis Screenwriter: John Gatins Producers: Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke Executive producer: Cherylanne Martin Director of photography: Don Burgess Production designer: Nelson Coates Costume designer: Louise Frogley Editor: Jeremiah O’Driscoll Music: Alan Silvestri R rating, 139 minutes

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Movie Review: 'Flight'

Kenneth Turan

Movie critic Kenneth Turan reviews Flight , starring Denzel Washington. Turan says Washington plays an intriguing — and morally ambivalent — hero.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• November 2, 2012
• Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker; Kelly Reilly as Nicole Maggen; Don Cheadle as Hugh Lang; Bruce Greenwood as Charlie Anderson; John Goodman as Harling Mays; Melissa Leo as Ellen Brock; Nadine Velazquez as Katerina Marquez; Brian Geraghty as Ken Evans; Tamara Tunie as Margaret Thomason; James Badge Dale as the Gaunt Young Man; Garcelle Beauvais as Deana; Peter Gerety as Avington Carr; Ron Caldwell as Trevor

Home Release Date

• February 5, 2013
• Robert Zemeckis

Distributor

• Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

A man awakens in a hotel room. He grabs an open beer bottle and drains the dregs, setting it down next to other empty bottles and an overflowing ash tray. A naked woman next to him rises, then listens as the man takes a phone call and argues with his ex-wife. The woman reminds him they have a 9:00 a.m. flight. The man snorts a line of cocaine. Then he gets ready for work.

His name is Whip Whittaker. And he’s a veteran pilot for SouthJet Air.

Today, Whip will fly under the influence—just like he’s done 10 times in the last three days. But today will not be just like every other day for Whip and his lover, a flight attendant named Katerina Marquez. Today Whip and an earnest co-pilot he’s never met will ascend into the teeth of a maelstrom.

Twenty-six minutes after a rough take-off, the plane slips into a stream of smooth air. Then the unthinkable happens. There’s a thud—a thud that awakens the inebriated captain from the stupor he’s slipped into. Then, the plunge. The plane sheds 10,000 feet in moments.

The co-pilot prays. Loudly: “Lord Jesus!” Screams fill the cabin. A flight attendant gets hurled into a bulkhead. She collapses.

Chaos reigns everywhere on the stricken plane.

Everywhere, that is, except Capt. Whip Whittaker’s chair. Step by step, the veteran pilot takes control. He slows the plane’s precipitous dive, inverting it to stabilize its flight. Five hundred feet above a field next to a church outside Atlanta, Whip flips the plane back over and … “lands” it.

When Whip awakens after the crash, he’s in a hospital room recovering from minor injuries. Waiting for him is pilot union representative Charlie Anderson, who informs him that only six of the 102 souls onboard lost their lives.

It’s a miracle. Whip Whittaker is a hero.

But there is one other matter: the results of the toxicology test taken before Whip regained consciousness. Results that will determine whether the alcoholic and drug-abusing hero spends the remainder of his days in prison.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Flight is about two crashes. The first involves Whip Whittaker’s miraculous landing of a crippled plane. The second is the slow-motion crash of the pilot’s life as he’s forced out of denial about his addictions.

Whip grew up flying his father’s crop duster and later flew in the Navy. He’s a man’s man, someone who projects an aura of invincibility. While everyone else panics, his placidly preternatural piloting skill proves he’s totally in control. Even as the plane rockets downward, Whip has the presence of mind to instruct a flight attendant named Margaret to speak into the flight data recorder and tell her son that she loves him.

But Whip’s not in control of his life. His substance abuse has cost him his wife and his relationship with his teenage son, Trevor.

In the hospital, Whip meets another addict, Nicole, a woman who’s in the grip of heroin and trapped in an unwanted porn “career.” Nicole and Whip are kindred spirits, and they seek to help each other. Whip confronts her predatory landlord, for instance. Nicole, meanwhile, heads to AA and exhorts Whip to do the same.

It’s partly to keep from defaming Katerina’s memory (she dies trying to save a little boy right before the plane crashes) that Whip eventually and tearfully admits he drank before that flight and many others. In prison, he tells a group of fellow addicts, “That was it. I was finished. I was done. It was as if I had reached my lifelong limit of lies. I could not tell one more lie.” Despite incarceration, Whip concludes, “For the first time in my life, I’m free.” He says he’s made apologies to many who tried to help him through the years, some of whom have forgiven him, he believes, some of whom haven’t. One of those people is his son, with whom he has a renewed relationship by film’s end.

Spiritual Elements

A Christian couple reasons that the crash was preordained by God, saying, “Nothing happens in the kingdom of our Lord that’s a mistake.” They also say they believe that “Jesus our Savior” was guiding Whip’s hands. In the same conversation, they describe God as a “higher judge” than any human authority.

Whip and Nicole encounter a cancer patient who essentially says the same thing. He believes that God chose for him to have cancer. Embracing that thought as he nears death has led to a sense of peace and freedom that he wishes he would have had earlier.

But when Whip hears the crash described as an “act of God” (a phrase that’s used a lot), he asks, “Whose God would do this?” He mocks the faith of flight attendant Margaret Thomason, saying he’ll get her back to Atlanta in time for her prayer meeting with “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Margaret corrects him, saying she attends Christ the King Baptist Church. She also invites him to come with her.

As she sobers up, Nicole is shown sitting next to what looks like a Bible, which Whip picks up and looks at. So there’s a bit of movement in his spiritual condition shown. In prison, he hints that God played a role in his newfound sobriety when he says, “I’m sober. I thank God for that.” He has a framed copy of the Serenity Prayer in his cell.

The plane crashes near a Pentecostal church, with one wing clipping the steeple. It happens as white-robed church members baptize new believers in a nearby lake. We’re told they set up a prayer vigil for the wounded. Throughout the film we glimpse Christian symbols such as crosses, crucifixes and praying hands.

Sexual Content

That opening hotel-room scene with Whip and Katerina shows her completely naked and from all angles. She wanders around the room for several long minutes in that condition as Whip talks with his ex-wife on the phone. Eventually, she dons a thong and gets dressed.

Nicole is shown walking out of an apartment with $100; it’s implied she’s prostituted herself. She heads to a porn film set where she’s supposed to be in two scenes involving anal sex. An actor and the director talk through the “action,” and the actor undoes a towel (facing her, not the camera) so she can see his “pipe” (as they call his anatomy) before filming. Nicole has had enough by this time, though, and refuses to do the shoot. Later, the director gives her packages of heroin and cocaine. Thus, when Nicole admonishes Whip about his alcoholism, he counterattacks by accusing her of performing oral sex in exchange for drugs. Nicole’s sleazy landlord hints that he’s willing to cut her a break on rent in exchange for sex. It’s implied that she’s acquiesced to similar manipulation before.

Nicole moves in with Whip. It’s implied they sleep together. (We see her bare back in bed one morning.) In the hospital, an old pilot friend of Whip’s named Harling Mays brings him a variety of contraband, including cigarettes, alcohol and a stack of pornographic magazines. Harling calls them “stroke mags,” and instructs Whip to masturbate as much as he wants—because he’s a hero. We see Whip’s bare backside in a hospital gown.

Violent Content

Wicked turbulence during SouthJet Flight 227’s initial descent takes out one flight attendant by bashing her head brutally against two bulkheads. Passengers are rattled mightily throughout the plane’s plunge.

After the crash, another flight attendant’s head is pinned bloodily beneath a piece of protruding metal. Blood covers co-pilot Ken Evans’ face; after he recovers from a coma, he tells Whip that his legs and pelvis have been crushed. Whip has suffered face lacerations and torn ligaments.

We see the crash from the outside, too. A wing shears off, and burning wreckage is seen. Both engines explode.

Whip tackles Nicole’s landlord. Whip later seeks refuge at his ex-wife’s house. But he’s drunk, and their encounter soon degenerates into a shouting match that escalates into a wrestling match with his son.

Crude or Profane Language

About 50 f-words, at least one of them paired with “mother.” Nearly 25 s-words. God’s name is linked with “d‑‑n” three or four times. Jesus’ name is abused the same number of times, including one back-to-back usage with the f-word. Milder profanities includes “a‑‑,” “b‑‑ch” and “h‑‑‑.” We hear rough slang for the male anatomy.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Whip smokes and drinks constantly. We see him consume beer and vodka while driving. Once, he falls on a table full of bottles, then passes out. Before his hearing, Whip’s team of handlers makes sure there’s no alcohol in his hotel room. Unfortunately, a door between his room and the next has inadvertently been left open, and he finds—and drinks—an entire mini fridge full of booze. When Charlie and Hugh find him, he’s passed out in his underwear in the bathroom, bottles strewn everywhere, the toilet smeared with his blood.

Twice, Whip uses cocaine (a stimulant) to “overcome” the depressant effects of alcohol. Both times we see him snort the stuff. He also smokes a cocaine-dipped cigarette.

Nicole’s addiction is heroin. She obtains it from her porn-movie pusher, then goes home and shoots up. We see her tie off her arm and insert the needle. She soon passes out and is hospitalized.

We hear mentions of prescription medications such as Xanax and Vicodin. Whip flushes some of those pills down the toilet.

Other Negative Elements

Lawyer Hugh Lang is hired to make Whip’s incriminating toxicology report “go away” by any means necessary. Hugh, Charlie and others who work for the airline have a strong interest in exonerating Whip because if he’s guilty of operating a plane under the influence during a fatal crash, the ensuing legal liability would likely bankrupt the airline. So they work tirelessly to ensure that he’s ready to lie through his deposition. They also stand by as Harling lays lines of cocaine out for the pilot to “whip” him into shape. (Whip does lie throughout much of the hearing, but in the end confesses the truth.)

Earlier in the investigation, Whip leans on both Margaret and Ken, asking them to lie on his behalf. Both resist. In the end, however, it’s implied that neither tells quite the whole truth.

Flight plumbs the depths of one man’s destructive addictions, as Denzel Washington fully inhabits Whip Whittaker’s proud, fractured, damaged psyche. It’s a compelling performance that reminds us that only the truth can set a trapped man free.

Throughout the journey, viewers are prompted to ponder whether God might somehow be at work, both in shaping the circumstances that reveal Whip’s desperate condition and in offering Himself as an alternative to the world’s empty ways.

But Flight seeks to accomplish that noble narrative purpose without pulling any of its punches. Whether it’s Whip Whittaker’s predilection for illicit sex, cocaine or the bottle, the camera rarely looks away from the self-destructive choices that corrode his soul. The addiction-riddled pilot has a gnawing emptiness inside, and Flight insists that we look unblinkingly into that shadowy void’s darkest recesses.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Audiences buckle up for one kind of movie but end up strapped in for another in director Robert Zemeckis' welcome return to live-action after a dozen years away.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Audiences buckle up for one kind of movie but end up strapped in for another in “Flight,” director Robert Zemeckis’ welcome return to live-action after a dozen years away. Serious-minded drama steers a horrifying nightmare at 20,000 feet into one man’s turbulent personal struggle with his drinking problem — and not in the jokey “ Airplane! ” sense, either. Denzel Washington is aces as a commercial airline pilot who pulls off a miraculous mid-air stunt while flying with a 0.24 blood alcohol concentration, only to face his demons on the ground. Pic should soar on all platforms — except in-flight, of course.

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For most alcoholics, crash-landing a jetliner would qualify as rock bottom — reason enough to quit drinking and seek help. In the case of Capt. Whip Whitaker (Washington), however, it’s just the beginning of a battle in which his greatest adversary is himself. Though technically an ensemble piece, “Flight” is as much a one-man showcase as Zemeckis’ “Cast Away” was for Tom Hanks.

Popular on Variety

Back in the land of the living, after a run of performance-capture pictures including “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf,” the helmer has embraced a project that depends entirely on the power of the human face — an assignment for which Washington is the perfect co-pilot. Internalizing the angry flame he typically displays onscreen, the star undercuts his own trademark swagger with the suggestion that, for some, such cocky behavior could mask far deeper problems.

Whitaker is flying high, sleeping with a comely stewardess ( Nadine Velazquez ) and chasing away his morning hangovers with a line of cocaine before stepping into the cockpit, until a mechanical malfunction sends his plane into a nosedive. Judging by the cool and collected way Whitaker handles the situation, he could be the poster boy for high-functioning alcoholism. Attempting to re-create the same scenario on a simulator after the fact, no other pilot could pull off the same maneuver. And yet, had Whitaker not literally been asleep at the wheel when the plane pitched forward, maybe the entire situation could have been avoided, sparing the six lives lost in his stunning recovery move.

Few events are more visceral to experience onscreen than an airplane crash, and “Flight” ranks alongside “Fearless” and “Alive” in the sheer intensity of its opening act. But John Gatins’ perceptively original script takes the rest of the story in a far different direction. For the first week or so, Whitaker vows to get sober, raiding every hiding place in his grandfather’s Georgia cabin for stashed liquor bottles and pouring them down the drain. It’s a symbolic gesture, but one that ultimately represents little more than wasted money for a man so hooked on hooch that within a few scenes, he’s sucking down Stoli vodka straight from its half-gallon jug (while driving, no less).

Enter a number of concerned supporting characters — figures essential to Whitaker’s journey and yet dwarfed by the dominant attention Zemeckis pays his deeply conflicted protag, through whose eyes we experience all but an early digressive scene setting up Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a lovely yet self-destructive masseuse. Nicole stands the best chance of getting through to Whitaker, though trying to save a fellow addict could backfire. It doesn’t help that Whitaker’s dealer (John Goodman, channeling “ The Big Lebowski ‘s” laid-back Dude) repeatedly swoops in with fresh supplies.

Whitaker’s near-constant, never-glamorous state of intoxication has long since alienated him from his ex-wife (Garcelle Beauvais) and estranged son (Justin Martin, who leaves a strong impression in two scenes). The only other friend in his corner is old service buddy Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood), now a rep for the pilots’ union, who’s put in the tricky position of wanting to remain loyal to Whitaker even as blood tests reveal criminal levels of intoxication.

While Whitaker works through his personal issues, an imposing investigation into the crash looms. As corrupt back-room negotiations build to a hearing, overseen by a no-nonsense Melissa Leo, in which Whitaker can all too easily lie his way off the hook — assuming he can stay sober long enough to get through it. (Looks like he picked the wrong week to stop drinking.)

The procedural mechanics matter less to Zemeckis than what Whitaker is experiencing at any given moment, evidenced by the way Don Burgess’ elegant live-action lensing never feels detached from the character. By this point in the story, even those who’ve fully identified with Washington’s prickly yet impressively accessible performance can’t help but view him as some kind of monster, albeit a tragic one. Everything, from the tormented look in Washington’s eyes to the empathetic strains of Alan Silvestri ‘s score, begs for Whitaker to redeem himself in that moment, and yet, Gatins has written such a captivatingly compromised antihero, this final moment of truth plays as gripping as the airplane disaster that started things off.

• Production: A Paramount release and presentation of an Imagemovers, Parkes/MacDonald production. Produced by Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke. Executive producer, Cherylanne Martin. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Screenplay, John Gatins.
• Crew: Camera (Deluxe color, widescreen), Don Burgess; editor, Jeremiah O'Driscoll; music, Alan Silvestri; production designer, Nelson Coates; art director, David Lazan; set decorator, James Edward Ferrell; costume designer, Louise Frogley; sound (Datasat/Dolby Digital), William B. Kaplan; sound designer, Randy Thom; supervising sound editor, Dennis Leonard; re-recording mixers, Thom, Leonard, Dennis Sands; special effects supervisor, Michael Lantieri; visual effects supervisor, Kevin Baillie; visual effects, Atomic Fiction; stunt coordinator, Charlie Croughwell; associate producer, Heather Kelton; assistant director, Dana J. Kuznetzkoff; second unit director, Steve Starkey; casting, Victoria Burrows, Scot Boland. Reviewed at Paramount Studios, Los Angeles, Oct. 11, 2012. (In New York Film Festival -- closer.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 138 MIN.
• With: Whip Whitaker - Denzel Washington Hugh Lang - Don Cheadle Nicole - Kelly Reilly Harling Mays - John Goodman Charlie Anderson - Bruce Greenwood Ken Evans - Brian Geraghty Margaret Thomason - Tamar Tunie With: Nadine Velazquez, Peter Gerety, Garcelle Beauvais, Justin Martin, Melissa Leo.

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Review: Flight (2012)

Director : Robert Zemeckis Written by: John Gatins Starring : Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, and Melissa Leo Genre : Drama MPAA : R

Synopsis : In this action-packed mystery thriller, Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington stars as Whip Whitaker, a seasoned airline pilot, who miraculously crash lands his plane after a mid-air catastrophe, saving nearly every soul on board.  After the crash, Whip is hailed as a hero, but as more is learned, more questions than answers arise as to who or what was really at fault and what really happened on that plane?

A lot of people will notice the advertising for this film emphasizing the flight and the daring landing performed by Denzel’s character Whip Whitaker. The film isn’t about the actual events of the plane, the crash, or the court case that followed but is rather a character analysis of a man struggling with alcohol addiction. After the plane crash officials drew a blood sample from Whip and tested it to discover that he had alcohol within his system at the time of the crash. This is a little misleading from what’s in the trailers and leads the viewer to discover what the film is truly about in a remarkable way. Now, this isn’t like when Drive was marketed as a fast paced action film and some viewers were disappointed when they found out what it really was about. This is a good surprise because you’re satisfied with everything that’s shown in the marketing within the first hour. It’s like finding the prize in the cereal box, digging deeper, and finding another and more intriguing prize hidden a little deeper within. There’s lots of smoke and mirrors but it pays off in a positive way.

First thing about this film that caught my attention was the presence of Denzel. You’ll often hear actors and those involved with his films emphasize the presence he brings to a set and it’s almost noticeable in his co-stars’ performances. Denzel gives an expected performance, partly due to the characters he portrays. It’s an almost generic performance and I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone cried out that he’s John Q/Frank Grimes with a drinking problem. It’s remarkable that he can sleepwalk through a performance and yet somehow satisfyingly entertain this blogger by upping the ante during the key scenes and delivering accordingly. He relies on his presence but with his method of performance it works and people tend to act “around” Denzel as opposed to acting “with” Denzel. Everyone else talks “up” to him and Denzel tends to talk “down” to everyone else, solidifying himself as the alpha early on.

Never scared.

John Goodman provided a fairly fun character  as Harling Maysthat and also didn’t seem like too much of a stretch of his natural self. He seems very relaxed portraying a guy who drinks frequently and loves a good line of coke once in a while with friends. Again, it didn’t feel like this was too much of a stretch . He was actually very appreciable whenever he was on screen and managed to lighten the tone and inject some humor with his presence. He has some very interesting chemistry with Washington and seems to be the exception with the “talking up, talking down” thing which helps with his portrayal of a close friend and confidant. Don Cheadle also popped up in this film from time to time and did a serviceable job as attorney Hugh Lang. He wasn’t a primary character within this film but exhibited a smart and focused character attempting to help a man maintain his freedom.

I loved the overall direction of this film and let me explain what I mean: This film is a complete package. The pacing, cinematography, and even the soundtrack is overflowing with an older charm that I don’t always see in movies. I didn’t feel that any scene lingered too long or ended abruptly, no upsetting shaky cam, and no awkward accompanying music to a scene to remove you from you immersion into the film. The cinematography was very satisfying, overall, with the angles and shots used. I want to give special emphasis on the soundtrack as I found myself tapping my feet and nodding my ahead along with the scenes as they went along. There are those key moments when, sometimes, filmmakers will rely on the soundtrack to guide you through a scene without any dialogue and if I hadn’t been paying close attention I wouldn’t have noticed the technique in practice which is a credit to those involved with editing and direction. I was really happy with the soundtrack, and sound overall, and if I’m not mistaken I could swear I heard a song play from beginning to end and it wasn’t a detriment. Think about that, you might appreciate that fact as much as I do.

I was very surprised by the length of the film clocking in at over 2 hours in length. Now whats surprising is that the film didn’t feel too long and seemed to reach its natural conclusion. When the film ended, in my theater, the movie received a standing ovation with people seeming to really enjoy this movie, and where it went, and the ending which was extremely satisfying. The character arc introduced at the beginning of the film reached where it needed to reach before the credits appeared.

My gripe with the film would be with some of the weaker performances within the film. I won’t name names because in reality it’s only a minor nitpick but some of the other performances were weaker than what I believe they were aiming to deliver.

If you don’t see this in theaters make sure you watch it when it hits home release as this is the first film bringing back director Robert Zemeckis to the live-action department. Check out our recently published an interview with Zemeckis  conducted by New York Film Academy’s own Frank Pasquine.

I give Flight an 8 out of 10.

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Movie Review: Flight (2012)

• Aaron Leggo
• Movie Reviews
• 11 responses
• --> November 7, 2012

Ready for work.

Like the character at their latest movie’s core, Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis are veterans of their respective occupations. They’re pros that know how to operate the big machinery of their creative positions and their experience affords them a comfortable confidence to get the job done safely. This level of skill is important to note because it helps keep their addiction drama Flight in the air for much of its running time, but it also backfires when it proves too tempting to take the easy route and coast through the narrative while flaunting an outdated bag of tricks. To say that the landing suffers as a result would be an understatement big enough to fly a plane through.

Washington is William “Whip” Whitaker, a deeply flawed pilot and full-time alcoholic who probably figures he can make up for his personal issues with that generously alliterative name of his. We meet him in a hotel room and watch as he kills his potential hangover with a line of cocaine less than two hours before his next flight. So we’re already accustomed to the idea that Whip likes to fly planes when he’s drunk and high, which we soon learn is something that Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins clearly disapprove of. But initially, Flight appears prepped to soar into morally murky territory when Whip takes a controversial approach to getting his plane through a momentary rough patch soon after liftoff. The co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) questions Whip’s method, but even when addled by drugs and drink, Whip apparently has it all under control. It’s an interesting setup because while it doesn’t necessarily condone Whip’s extracurricular activities, it certainly doesn’t condemn them either.

So when a piece of plane hardware malfunctions, sending the plane into a nosedive and forcing Whip to take heroic action to salvage an almost certainly fatal situation, Flight embarks on a potentially complex journey. Whip lands the plane and saves almost everyone, but while the media praises him, a toxicology report revealing his blood alcohol level threatens to ruin his career and send him to jail. We know that Whip’s inebriated state didn’t contribute to the crash, but the very nature of the situation raises questions about ethical responsibility. The beginnings of a strong character arc and brave exploration of grim morality begin to materialize, but it’s here that Flight abandons its ambitions and opts for a comically stilted gaze at alcoholism, a conflict suddenly reduced to a simplistically grunting message that suggests that not only is not drinking good, but that any drinking at all is bad.

Well, when any drinking at all leads to mowing down a stocked minibar or guzzling a bottle of vodka that’s wider than Washington’s head, yeah, I guess that’s bad. But what happened to all that gray area we were promised? Flight literally spells out its commentary by making sure that none of the supposed “good” people in the cast ever have a drink in their hands, while Whip has one practically glued to his palm. Of course, Whip drinks enough for everyone, but it eventually gets ridiculous how huge a brush Zemeckis insists on using to paint the strokes of his preachy message about the evils of alcohol consumption. When Whip starts staring at a glass of vodka with a pained expression and soft, sad piano notes tinkle in the background, subtlety is officially swapped for clichéd familiarity. That sore spot you’re feeling on your head is Zemeckis and Gatins bashing their message into your brain.

As Whip slips deeper down the rabbit hole of booze, Flight continues its descent by rolling out a cart of clichés that range from generic visual techniques to sappy stops along Whip’s arc where he sits around and drunkenly watches old home movies. An awkwardly introduced subplot involving a junkie (Kelly Reilly) who strikes up a relationship with Whip just as she’s beginning to seek help for her addiction issues is a dull distraction used mainly to make Whip’s alcoholism look even more pathetic (you know you have a problem when the junkie sneers at you). Reilly does a fine job and she saves her scenes by elevating her performance beyond the reaches of the script, but it’s still not enough to justify such a mechanically employed character.

Extreme turbulence.

Other supporting cast members also deliver solid work, especially Bruce Greenwood as a union rep and old pal of Whip who wants desperately to help his friend. Don Cheadle shows up as a hotshot lawyer on Whip’s side and John Goodman plays a vulgar drug dealer who saunters into a few scenes for a bit of random comic relief. Gatins gives them all some crisp and occasionally funny dialogue to work with, so the script isn’t a total bust after the intriguing first act. Zemeckis juggles the cast in a laid-back manner and lets the movie unfold at a surprisingly quick pace that keeps it all in mostly entertaining territory for the bulky 138-minute running time. See what everyone can accomplish when they keep their hands off the bottle? Mediocrity! That’s not entirely fair, of course, because the acting really is quite strong, especially considering how good Washington is in spite of his character’s ridiculous arc, but Flight treats its themes and messages with such clunky clumsiness that it feels ripe for parody.

By trying to provide commentary on several subjects and eventually settling for a treacly treatise on the horrors of alcoholism, Zemeckis and Gatins spend way too much time on the blatantly obvious and seem to have only picked it as a focal point because it’s the easiest way to activate some good ol’ fashioned emotional manipulation. It’s still fun to see Zemeckis back behind the camera of a live-action picture (his first since “ Cast Away ” in 2000), but the adventurous innovation he experienced in between with motion capture projects hasn’t rubbed off on Flight .

Tagged: airplane , alcoholic , pilot

You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.

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'Movie Review: Flight (2012)' have 11 comments

November 7, 2012 @ 1:14 pm Gracier

And here I thought all pilots were alcoholics.

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November 7, 2012 @ 1:35 pm JeirchoJay

The trailer for this makes it look absolutely wretched.

November 7, 2012 @ 6:48 pm WaterFiend

November 7, 2012 @ 2:44 pm Ravyn360

All the good stuff can be seen in the first 20 minutes. Its tough to sit through the rest.

November 7, 2012 @ 3:02 pm ePears

So does Denzel pull it off or is this another in his long line of bad acting gigs?

November 7, 2012 @ 5:22 pm Lou

Does Denzel Washington age? I’m convinced he isn’t human…

November 7, 2012 @ 7:17 pm Robert Ale

DW is very ‘unnatural’ in this. He’s best at Training Day/Safe House roles.

November 7, 2012 @ 8:11 pm Kelly

Great review Aaron. The movie does turn into a PSA for alcoholism after the crash. Very dissapointing.

November 7, 2012 @ 10:28 pm Adrian

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie but Denzel Washington does a great job with this role. I’d say he is going to be a frontrunner for the awards circuit this year.

November 8, 2012 @ 4:41 pm Hector

Denzel Washington is a smug motherfucker. I boycott anything he stars in.

November 9, 2012 @ 2:45 pm General Disdain

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Denzel Washington in Flight : A Crash Landing That Soars

The star boldly portrays a flawed hero in Robert Zemeckis's potent drama

Just an ordinary day for Whip Whitaker. He wakes up after a night of booze, drugs and sex with a gorgeous flight attendant, does a line of coke, takes an angry phone call from his ex-wife and staggers to work. Captain Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot for SouthJet Airlines, and this morning he will be flying a plane from Orlando to Atlanta, if he can stay awake and lucid at the controls.

That trip, involving treacherous weather and engine failure that threaten the lives of the 102 people on board, climaxes in what may be the hairiest, scariest, most realistic and thrilling plane crash in movie history — a sequence that should be taught in film schools for decades, assuming there will still be film (or schools). But Robert Zemeckis’s  Flight , which had its world premiere Sunday at the New York Film Festival and will open in real theaters Nov. 2, is determined to chart an even more turbulent course: Whip’s attempt to assume, or avoid, control of his addiction. Screenwriter John Gatins has said his script combined “my two greatest fears: drinking myself to death and dying in a plane crash.” Blending The High and the Mighty and The Lost Weekend — or, from this year’s movies, The Grey and Smashed — Flight  at its best marks an advance for its director and a triumph for its star.

(READ: Corliss on Denzel Washington in Book of Eli )

The Festival’s closing attraction served as an ideal bookend to its opening-night film: Ang Lee’s  Life of Pi , the story of an Indian teenager stranded on a small boat with a ravenous Bengal tiger. Both movies are adventures about a lone soul who wages a daring battle with the elements and his roiling anxieties. The difference is that Whip’s disease makes him his own antagonist. When a post-crash toxicology report reveals a dangerous level of alcohol in his system and triggers an investigation, he is at risk of losing his job and his freedom. In the interior storm of  his  life, he’s both the boy and the tiger.

(READ: Corliss’s review of Life of Pi )

The movie’s title accurately describes Whip’s personality. A former Navy pilot with exceptional skills and daredevil instincts, he’s a natural high flyer, in the air and on land. Alcohol and cocaine are his essential fuel. The coke, he believes, sharpens his senses in the cockpit; the booze (he pours himself a screwdriver while speaking to the passengers early in the Orlando-to-Atlanta run) steadies his nerves and dulls the pain of his troubled life. Indeed, as the plane torpedoes toward earth Whip’s wits save lives and make him a national hero — even as the pressure of the investigation gives him one more reason to drink. Recovering alcoholics would say that Whip is in flight from himself. And that flight can’t stay aloft forever, which suggests another title for the film: Crash Landing .

This is the first live-action feature for Zemeckis since  Cast Away  in 2000; for the past dozen years the director has lived in, and expanded, the faux universe of motion-capture ( The Polar Express , Beowulf , A Christmas Carol ). Recall that Chuck Noland, the Tom Hanks character in Cast Away , survived a plane crash and faced awful solitude on a deserted island — a Robinson Crusoe with no Friday. Whip, no less isolated psychologically than Chuck is spatially, has plenty of people ready to help him maintain his national-hero status and sidestep prison. In a way, the two movies are replays of classic 1950s Westerns at opposite poles: Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning  High Noon , where Sheriff Gary Cooper confronts the bad guys alone after the townspeople have deserted him, and Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo , where Sheriff John Wayne accumulates more ragtag deputies than he wants or needs.

(READ: Corliss’s review of Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf )

Whip wants Trina (Nadine Velasquez), the flight-attendant girlfriend who shares his bed, drugs and heart, in part because she’s as addicted as he is. Other enablers surround Whip like wingmen: Charlie Henderson (Bruce Greenwood), an old Navy buddy who runs the pilots’ union; Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle), the crafty lawyer Charlie hires to quash the toxicology report and steer Whip through the investigation; and Harling Mays (John Goodman), Whip’s boisterous best friend — read: coke dealer — who figures the hair of the dog is just the antidote for an incriminating binge. Hell, it helped Whip maneuver the plane and save lives, didn’t it?

With friends like these, Whip needs enemies — denouncers of the mess he’s been making of his life. Some are loved ones, like his ex-wife (Garcelle Beauvais) and teenage son (Justin Martin), who endured his transgressions until they had to banish him. Others are fellow sufferers in Whip’s Hell, like the sad junkie Nicole (Kelly Reilly), who has supported her taste for “Taliban”-level heroin by working as a masseuse — “every kind of masseuse there is.” After an overdose, she’s been sent to the Atlanta hospital where Whip is recovering from his crash injuries. Nicole has already hit the bottom that Whip has been circling over for decades, avoiding a landing. She has resolved to go straight, which tests her romance with the handsome airman-alcoholic who defiantly boasts, “I choose to drink,”

(READ: James Poniewozik’s location report on Cast Away )

Whip, it’s clear, is a great pilot but not a good one, a man of personal power and emotional helplessness. Reflecting this dichotomy,  Flight seesaws between two types of heroes: the ones in movies and the ones in real life. In action films, the Hero Equation posits that the right kind of renegade can break all the rules and still win the game. His demons give him the edge he needs to achieve impossible feats that mortal men would be too timid or sane even to consider. And in old Westerns like Rio Bravo and Cat Ballou , the drunken gunslinger could beguile audiences with his stuporous amiability. But that’s just on the screen. Most actual airline passengers would prefer a reliable, responsible, everyday pilot to a coked-up dude with reckless charisma; the addict would be a danger to the souls on board and to himself.

So the suspense here comes not just from guessing whether Whip will ace the big public hearing conducted by a sharp federal inquisitor (Melissa Leo) but also in figuring out what kind of movie Flight is: an action picture or a Problem drama? the sympathetic portrait of a flawed hero or a denunciation of his weaknesses? Gatins’ and Zemeckis’s intent becomes evident toward the end of the film, but for the most part they keep the audience on Whip’s side, rooting uneasily for him to clear his name, if not his head, at the public hearing. Whip’s fallibility, no less than his power and charm, put the moviegoer in his corner. Besides, he’s Denzel Drinkin’ Washington, who has played bad guys — he won an Oscar for  Training Day — but more typically is the strong, haunted man audiences love to love. Washington’s nuanced performance is a tightrope walk between the Denzel whom people expect and the character he’s boldly burrowed into.

(READ: Richard Schickel on Denzel Washington in Training Day )

Flight has its own flaws, most of which can be forgiven. At times the supporting players (especially Goodman, who seems imported from a different movie, possibly The Big Lebowski ) flutter around the star and do their acting thing. Yet they take smart advantage of their small chances to make a big impression — especially Cheadle, a soft-spoken sort who may be playing the Devil, and James Badge Dale, who’s dynamite in an unnecessary but impressive turn as the hospital’s chattiest cancer patient. Reilly, an English actress who played Jude Law’s wife in the two Sherlock Holmes films, could be a younger Julianne Moore or the correct answer to the Hollywood question: Does Jessica Chastain have to be in every movie? She’s fine too. On the un forgivable side, there’s quite a bit of God talk, some of it from two Christians (“God landed that plane”) who get the derisive treatment that American movies routinely hand to evangelicals. That’s just lazy scriptwriting.

Most of Flight , though, has a character sharpness and an openness to ambiguity that are rare in movies from big studios and commercially savvy directors. The film is rated R (“for drug and alcohol abuse, language, sexuality/nudity and an intense action sequence”), but it doesn’t parade its Restricted status; it probably could have won a softer rating with some trimming of the opening scene. It’s as if Zemeckis weren’t trying to game the system, as so many directors do to get a PG-13, but just figured this is a film for grownups and should get a rating that reflected its intentions.

(READ: Corliss on the politicizing of movie ratings )

The restless creator of genre-bending hits like the Back to the Future  trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Contact and the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump , Zemeckis has occasionally been criticized (by me, for example) for making films that are less than the sum of their technically innovative parts. This time, he has acutely fused two movie cultures, mainstream and indie, in a sensibility riskier than the studio norm and more muscular than the Sundance films. A canny director and a top star decided to dig deep to find the core of a compromised hero. And when they reach that center of gravity,  Flight soars.

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Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Some miracles are not what they seem.

Commercial airline pilot Whip Whitaker has a problem with drugs and alcohol, though so far he's managed to complete his flights safely. His luck runs out when a disastrous mechanical malfunction sends his plane hurtling toward the ground. Whip pulls off a miraculous crash-landing that results in only six lives lost. Shaken to the core, Whip vows to get sober -- but when the crash investigation exposes his addiction, he finds himself in an even worse situation.

Denzel Washington Don Cheadle Kelly Reilly John Goodman Bruce Greenwood Brian Geraghty Tamara Tunie Nadine Velazquez Peter Gerety Garcelle Beauvais Melissa Leo Carter Cabassa Adam C. Edwards Conor O'Neill Charlie E. Schmidt Will Sherrod Boni Yanagisawa Adam Tomei Dane Davenport John Crow E. Roger Mitchell Ravi Kapoor Jill Jane Clements Tommy Kane James Badge Dale Susie Spear Purcell Philip Pavel Piers Morgan Jim Tilmon Show All… Charles Z. Gardner Tom Nowicki Jason Benjamin Ric Reitz Timothy Adams Darius Woods Ron Caldwell Dylan Kussman Janet Metzger Bethany Anne Lind Sharon Blackwood Pam Smith Justin Martin Shannon Walshe Rhoda Griffis Michael Beasley Ted Hall Laila Pruitt Precious Bright Steve Coulter Ted Huckabee Sarah Clark Vinnie Hasson Randy Thom Dennis P. Wise Paul Volle Hal Williams Kwesi Boakye Jennifer Olympia Bentley

Director Director

Robert Zemeckis

Producers Producers

Laurie MacDonald Walter F. Parkes Jack Rapke Steve Starkey Robert Zemeckis Heather Kelton

Writer Writer

John Gatins

Casting Casting

Victoria Burrows Toby Guidry Judith Sunga Scot Boland

Editor Editor

Jeremiah O'Driscoll

Cinematography Cinematography

Don Burgess

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Dana J. Kuznetzkoff Greg Gilman

Additional Directing Add. Directing

Steve Starkey

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Cherylanne Martin

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Robert Presley

Production Design Production Design

Nelson Coates

Art Direction Art Direction

David Lazan Jon Carlos

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Sarah Carter James Edward Ferrell Jr. John Berger Danny Brown

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Jenn Emberly Ryan Tudhope Kevin Baillie

Stunts Stunts

Charles Croughwell Alex Madison Jeannie Epper Ashley Rae Trisler John Casino Elizabeth Davidovich

Composer Composer

Alan Silvestri

Sound Sound

Goro Koyama Randy Thom Andy Malcolm Dennis Leonard Leff Lefferts Dennis S. Sands Stephen Urata

Costume Design Costume Design

Louise Frogley

Makeup Makeup

Nikoletta Skarlatos Stephanie Barnes Carl Fullerton Patrice Coleman Tracey L. Miller-Smith Quintessence Patterson Susan Ransom

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Teressa Hill Katrina Chevalier Larry M. Cherry Tracey Moss

Paramount Pictures ImageMovers Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation

Releases by Date

14 oct 2012, 13 nov 2012, 15 jan 2013, 24 feb 2013, 02 nov 2012, 08 nov 2012, 15 nov 2012, 22 nov 2012, 06 dec 2012, 07 dec 2012, 12 dec 2012, 10 jan 2013, 18 jan 2013, 24 jan 2013, 25 jan 2013, 30 jan 2013, 01 feb 2013, 07 feb 2013, 08 feb 2013, 13 feb 2013, 20 feb 2013, 21 feb 2013, 22 feb 2013, 28 feb 2013, 01 mar 2013, 14 mar 2013, 04 apr 2013, 19 apr 2013, 23 may 2013, 01 feb 2022, 01 jul 2022, 15 may 2013, 18 jun 2013, 19 jun 2013, 21 nov 2014, releases by country.

• Theatrical MA15+

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

• Theatrical 14
• Theatrical 18A
• Theatrical 18+
• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical K-12
• Premiere Paris
• Theatrical U
• Digital VOD
• Physical DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital 18 Prime Video
• Digital 16 Netflix
• Theatrical 12
• Physical 15 DVD
• Theatrical 18
• Theatrical 15A

Netherlands

• Physical 12 Blu ray
• Physical 12 DVD
• TV 12 RTL 5

New Zealand

• Theatrical R16

North Macedonia

Philippines.

• Theatrical M/16
• Premiere Belgrade Film Festival

South Africa

South korea.

• Theatrical 16
• Premiere 15 Stockholm International Film Festival

Switzerland

• Theatrical 限制級
• Premiere New York Film Festival
• Theatrical R

United Arab Emirates

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Review by nickusen

this should’ve ended with a post-credit stinger where sully (tom hanks) steps out of the shadows to tell denzel that he’s putting a team together

Review by Patrick Willems ★★½ 5

I really relate to the lawyer played by Don Cheadle who spends the whole movie frustrated by everything happening

Review by DirkH ★½ 29

Don't drink and fly.

Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½ 1

Frustrating, because it floats a genuinely challenging idea—that you'd rather be in a plane flown by a drunk, coked-up pilot who knows what he's doing and can react quickly and calmly under pressure than one flown by a sober stickler who'll panic and crash—but ultimately just wants to punish Whip for his trangressions, like every other addiction movie ever made. Long, slow, denial-fueled slide to rock bottom is, well, long and slow. Spasms of interest mostly involve Cheadle's lawyer and his prim disgust with the client he's working so hard to exonerate. Also the flight itself, of course, which I was surprised to find is more gripping in its procedural details than as pure spectacle. That moment where Whip placidly instructs the flight attendant to tell her son that she loves him, then simply says "black box" when she expresses confusion, was like a pure hit of concentrated pathos.

Review by Tyler ★★★★★ 13

This very fictional movie is, actually, very true. Let me tell you a story.

For a short period of time, my dad drove a city bus here in town. It was his way of finally trying to settle down and get sober, except he couldn’t get sober, nor could he settle down. One early dark morning, at around 5AM, on one of his more unsavory city routes filled with an unsavory clientele, a massive argument broke out on his bus. He was just trying to round out the night’s route, get home and sleep, as he had been up for two nights straight — it was a weekend, after all, which meant I was staying at mom’s and he was…

Review by Roberts Kulenko ★★

Consider a drinking game:

Down a shot every time Zemeckis cues a classic song in an unbelievably unsubtle way.

Review by demi adejuyigbe ★★★★½

Whoa. Dramatic, emotional, terse, and sad. A terrific movie that reaches a stunning climax that makes me both root for Denzel and curse him as loud as I possibly can. Kelly Reilly and Denzel Washington both deserve Oscar nominations at the very least for their roles.

Review by Jay Cheel ★★ 4

In Flight, Robert Zemeckis continues his tradition of mixing live action and cartoon characters.

Review by realrzn ★★★ 1

The moral of the movie: cocaine always saves the day...stick with it long enough and it’ll solve all your problems

Review by grace spelman ★★★★

Uh oh!!!!!!!!

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★½ 10

Action!: The Rise and Fall (?) Of Robert Zemeckis

Written by the guy who brought us Basketball movie underrated masterpiece Coach Carter , and the first live action film by Zemeckis in a decade, this film confirms that the director is not only as good as the scripts he's handled, but also when he stops focusing on the visual effects and concentrates on the story, essentially the drama.

Denzel Washington rarely manages to disappoint, and he's on fire this time around. The same year he was nominated for the Oscars, Daniel Day-Lewis won his so far last statuette for "Lincoln", and although I love that actor and think his portrayal in that film was truly transformative, I would honestly probably have…

Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ½ 11

The Letterboxd Era Catch-Up Project

I was going to give this 3 stars because, although the 'drugs are bad mmmkay' and 'Praise Jesus!' stuff was amazingly heavy-handed, shit and completely symptomatic of what a terribly drab and boring director Robert Zemeckis became post-Back To The Future, this was worth seeing for fantastic performances from Denzel Washington and Kelly Reilly, the awesome sight of John Goodman as a drug dealer, and the brilliant plane crash scene.

But it has Piers Morgan in it.

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Review by Brian Eggert November 3, 2012

For the last 12 years, director Robert Zemeckis has campaigned for the seemingly bottomless creative wells of motion-capture animated films, releasing The Polar Express , Beowulf , and A Christmas Carol with impressive if often creepy visual results. With Flight , he returns to live-action filmmaking in a deeply affecting human tragedy not unlike his last film, before his stint in animation, 2000’s Cast Away . Indeed, both pictures feature a protagonist beset by an astoundingly filmed plane crash, after which they’re left to reconcile their personal demons. Both titles have multiple meanings and both feature tour-de-force performances from their leading men. In the earlier film, Tom Hanks, alone on the screen for much of the film, proved he was capable of captivating his audience with almost no supporting players. In a not-so literal way, Denzel Washington’s performance as a commercial pilot tortured by alcoholism proves Flight is a one-man show.

Washington delivers one of his most complex and intricate performances as Whip Whitaker, who we first meet in a shabby Orlando hotel room at 7 a.m., where, accompanied by his naked flight attendant and casual lover, he snorts a few lines of cocaine to relieve his morning hangover in time for the 9 a.m. flight home to Atlanta. Braving a downpour, Whip guides the plane into takeoff with 102 “souls” aboard, his new co-pilot (Brian Gerety) observing Whip is not at his best and quotes the manual to him whenever possible. After Whip sneaks three onboard vodka bottles for a massive screwdriver, he takes a nap only to wake and find the plane has had a mechanical malfunction. What follows is a nerve-racking crash sequence where Whip miraculously pulls the airliner out of an uncontrolled dive and lands the plane in a field. With only a handful of casualties, Whip is declared a media hero, pulling off a feat no other pilot could ever complete.

Again, much like Cast Away , Zemeckis orchestrates the crash sequence in master strokes, Whip turning the plane on its head to stop the frenzied descent as the director controls every frame with carefully considered editing and camerawork. This wowing sequence might, for a moment, unfairly shift the audience’s attention away from Whip’s personal troubles, except Washington’s performance goes into territory dark enough to surprise the audience in other ways, creating a balance between the film’s opening spectacle and the subsequent human drama. In the aftermath of the crash, Whip is found to have a 0.24 blood alcohol level and faces possible criminal proceedings. In his corner are a former flying buddy and pilot’s union rep, Charlie (Bruce Greenwood), and their rigid attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle); only gradually do they discover how serious Whip’s condition really is. Moreover, Whip is desperate to conceal his drinking problem. To avoid the press, instead of going home, he stays at his late father’s farmhouse and closed crop-dusting business. He pours every drop of booze down the drain, and for a moment, we believe he might have changed.

Certainly, most would be shocked into sobriety by the trauma of a plane crash. Whip’s conversations with other survivors and one cancer patient in a hospital stairwell confirm everyone, including his attorney, has turned to religion, claiming the crash was an “act of God.” When his co-pilot’s wife repeatedly utters “Praise Jesus!”, their faith becomes suspect for Whip, who knows that he and he alone landed the plane. Meanwhile, he forms a romance with recovering drug addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly), having met her during his post-crash hospital stay where she was recuperating from a heroin overdose. She now attends AA meetings and finds she can’t be around Whip’s eventual plunges back into heavy drinking. Everyone around Whip tries to help in their way—save for Whip’s hippie enabler friend, played by John Goodman by way of Jeff Lebowski—keeping him away from alcohol and drugs, and also preparing him for an upcoming hearing with a stone-cold investigator (Melissa Leo).

Screenwriter John Gatnis ( Real Steel ) carefully deliberates over how Whip landed the plane through his high-functioning alcoholism, spending perhaps too much time deciding how he will pay, if at all. This difficult character has no problem lying his way through official inquiries, while he begs his friends to help him sober up in time. The film’s most tragic moments come when Whip finds himself tempted after a week or so without a drink. On and off the wagon he goes, behaving like a tried and true alcoholic plagued by a disease, and not some schmaltzy Lifetime Original movie version. Washington’s character propels some very ugly behavior, and thus the film’s R-rating is very appropriate, such as when he shows up drunk on the doorstep of his estranged ex-wife and son (Garcelle Beauvais and Justin Martin). Another actor lacking Washington’s natural charisma would not have been able to maintain the audience’s sympathy throughout such low emotional trials.

Although in the past, Zemeckis has preoccupied himself with the technical aspects of his directing— Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Death Becomes Her , and his motion-capture work was all driven by incredible technical feats more than captivating characters—with Flight, he’s never more concerned with the method of his film than with Whip’s perspective or Washington’s performance. Where Zemeckis traditionally invites bold, slick camerawork, outside of the crash sequence cinematographer Don Burgess delivers a series of intimate shots in confined rooms, allowing the actors to flourish. If Flight does nothing else, it negates what Zemeckis has spent the last decade or more trying to prove in a series of flat, emotionally vapid animated films. The film shows us how a rather simple story can be elevated through the pains and complex inner workings visible on the human face.

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First lesson learned from Flight : Never take Denzel Washington for granted. After making his bones with Glory , Malcolm X and The Hurricane , and winning a Best Actor Oscar for 2001’s Training Day , Washington settled into a groove of action films ( Safe House , Unstoppable ). With the exception of 2007’s incisive American Gangster , they relied more on his star power than his acting skills. Flight reminds us of what Washington can do when a role hits him with a challenge that would floor a lesser actor. He’s a ball of fire, and his detailed, depth-charged, bruisingly true performance will be talked about for years.

Washington, 57, plays Capt. Whip Whitaker, a commercial pilot with a jones for hooch and blow, on the job as well as off. His marriage is a casualty, along with his relationship with his only son. Can Whip stay up all night doing drinks, drugs and sex with a hottie flight attendant (Nadine Velazquez) and still make his 9 a.m. flight to Atlanta? He can. Can he sneak vodka on board in an orange juice container and still fly in a blinding rainstorm? He can.

But do you want him to? That’s the big question that Washington, screenwriter John Gatins and director Robert Zemeckis keep working like a wound. After Zemeckis spent the past 12 years experimenting with performance-capture animation ( Polar Express , yikes!), it’s good to have him back in the live-action arena he deserted after Cast Away . Flight is Zemeckis at his most emotionally open and thematically provocative.

It also comes on like gangbusters. In the white-knuckle opener, Zemeckis nails us to our seats as a hung­over Whip dozes, much to the horror of God-fearing co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty). The suspense tightens when the jet’s hydraulics fail and Whip – roused from his stupor by a line of coke – must literally turn the plane upside down to make an emergency landing. The raw panic is palpable. But what astonishes is Whip’s unflappable cool, born of a lifetime on the job and, just maybe, Dutch courage. The sequence is a marvel of technical wizardry. But Zemeckis never lets FX crush the story’s human scale. Six lives were lost on this flight. But 96 more were saved because Whip was flying high.

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That is the ethical tightrope that Flight walks with keen intelligence. Whip is cheered as a hero, since 10 other pilots failed to duplicate his feat in simulations. Ironically, that fact enables him to drink more. He’s invincible! Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a recovering junkie, shares his bed and tries to steer him toward rehab. But a shot at going cold turkey leads to the inevitable relapse.

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Whip is a pawn. The airline and the pilots union want a cover-up. A hotshot lawyer (Don Cheadle) is hired to spin reports of Whip’s high-octane blood-alcohol level at the crash site. At a public hearing, the head prosecutor (a superb Melissa Leo, her honeyed voice a lethal weapon) is determined to make someone accountable for those six lives lost. How can Whip get through an interrogation, especially the morning after a killer bender? The same way he landed the jet, with a little help from his dealer friend Harling (John Goodman, vividly funny and scary as a force of Dr. Feelgood nature).

At the hearing, Zemeckis has only to train his sights on Washington as he captures a soul in free fall. You might bitch that Flight levels off after its shocking, soaring start. But you’d be missing the point of an exceptional entertainment that Zemeckis shades into something quietly devastating – not an addiction drama, but the deeper spectacle of a man facing the truth about himself. God isn’t Whip’s co-pilot. His jet even clipped off the steeple of a church on its way down. Whip is a man alone. And all you need to know about him is mirrored in Washington’s eyes. Zemeckis couldn’t invent a digital effect to match an image that hypnotic, that haunting.

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Flight Parent Guide

In the end we see hope for washington's high-flying character. however, this artistically capable film risks taking viewers down a runway paved mostly with good intentions..

A pilot (Denzel Washington) becomes an overnight hero when he miraculously lands an ailing airplane and saves the lives of everyone onboard. But fame turns on him just as fast when the accident's investigation uncovers some unexpected information.

Release date November 2, 2012

Run Time: 139 minutes

Official Movie Site

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

Denzel Washington delivers an award worthy performance as airline pilot Whip Whitaker, a man who has somehow managed to keep his job while nursing both an alcohol and cocaine addiction. But one fateful day his drug dependencies are revealed after, through no apparent fault on his part, the plane he’s flying suffers a major malfunction and nose-dives toward the ground. His younger Christian and sober co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) panics while the drugged up captain coolly performs a literal death-defying maneuver and lands the plane in a field. The somewhat explicit crash leaves a half-dozen people dead, but the vast majority of passengers survive and hail Whip a hero.

A few days later, after Whip has partially recovered from his injuries, he is faced with the facts. The NTSB investigation has revealed the alcohol and drugs in the pilot’s bloodstream and now Whip is facing possible manslaughter charges for the deaths caused by the accident. Initially still denying the charges, even to his own appointed lawyer (Don Cheadle), we begin to see the depth of addiction this man has succumb to.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about Flight is the focus on substance abuse as opposed to the crash itself, and that’s probably wise considering there is far more fiction than fact in this script based on an actual event. (The original pilot served jail time for drug trafficking nearly two decades prior to his heroic crash avoidance, and he was not under the influence of chemicals during the incident.) However while the script goes to great lengths to show the destruction caused by Whip’s behavior there is a sense he was reasonably competent in spite of his intoxication, perhaps even implying that had he not been stoned when the plane tilted out of control he would not have been able to pull of the heroic landing. This could leave viewers, both old and young, with the opposite message this movie appears to be suggesting.

Related to this concern are scenes that show Whip using cocaine to quickly recover from the intoxicating effects of alcohol—both prior to flying the plane and appearing at an important investigatory hearing. This unintended lesson on the benefits of snorting after boozing is another potentially dangerous element. Other content issues include full female nudity during the first few minutes of the film and dozens of sexual expletives, some sexual comments, a multitude of scatological slang and other profanities, terms of deity and derogatory statements heard throughout.

In the end we see hope for Washington’s high-flying character. However, this artistically capable film risks taking viewers down a runway paved mostly with good intentions.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Flight rating & content info.

Why is Flight rated R? Flight is rated R by the MPAA for drug and alcohol abuse, language, sexuality/nudity and an intense action sequence.

Violence: A plane crash is shown in somewhat explicit detail, including a flight attendant who getting her foot caught in an overhead bin, hits her head, loses consciousness and is tossed around the cabin. Later people, both dead and alive, are seen with bloody injuries. Earlier a plane flies through intense turbulence causing a passenger to vomit and others to become very concerned. A woman’s landlord makes sexual suggestions toward her after he enters her apartment looking for overdue rent. Later her landlord threatens her with a baseball bat until aanother man appears and punches the landlord. Injured patients are seen in a hospital setting. Frequent verbal altercations occur.

Sexual Content: An unmarried man and woman are seen waking up in bed together, the woman gets up and while completely naked wanders about the room until eventually getting dressed. A man’s buttocks are exposed in his hospital gown. Men are seen naked from the rear during a scene that appears to be on the movie set of a pornography production. An unmarried couple live together. A man is provided with a stack of pornographic magazines from a friend and a comment alluding to masturbation is made.

Language: Dozens of sexual expletives, scatological terms, crude anatomical terms, religious expletives and derogatory names are heard throughout the film.

Alcohol/Drug Use: Alcohol use is depicted throughout the film, mainly by a character that denies he is an alcoholic. This same character and two other others are seen snorting cocaine. A woman prepares a needle and injects heroin. Addiction recovery meetings are shown, and one character begins the recovery process. Another character eventually admits to being an alcoholic. A secondary character with cancer gathers with others to smokes tobacco in a hospital stairwell; when a person provides him with a full pack of cigarettes he says he will pass them out in the cancer ward. Cigarette smoking is depicted in other scenes. While negative consequences for substance abuse are included, some scenes are shown in a somewhat comedic light, and other scenes may unintentionally encourage abuse.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Flight Parents' Guide

The argument for more lenient drug and alcohol laws sometimes uses the logic that it only harms those who use these substances. What effects of drug and alcohol use do we see in this movie? How does it involve others who are not users? What are the economic costs of drug and alcohol use? How much money would you be willing to pay to support drug and alcohol screening of airline pilots and people whose jobs may have life or death consequences?

This movie is loosely based on the story of a Canadian pilot who successful landed an Airbus 330 that had run out of fuel during the flight. You can learn more about Captain Robert Piche here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Piché

http://www.asrsq.ca/fr/salle/porte-ouverte/0403/salle_por_040304.php

The most recent home video release of Flight movie is February 4, 2013. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: Flight

Release Date: 5 February 2013

Flight release to home video in either Blu-ray or DVD.

Flight on Blu-ray includes:

- Feature film in high definition

- Origins of Flight

- The Making of Flight

- Anatomy of a Plane Crash

- Q&A Highlights

Flight on DVD offers:

- Feature film in standard definition

Related home video titles:

Other movies depicting terrifying air travel rides include Flightplan (where a mother loses her daughter onboard the aircraft) and Flight of the Phoenix (when a crash in the dessert necessitates teamwork to rebuild the plane).

• Cast & crew

Flight Risk

A pilot transports an Air Marshal accompanying a fugitive to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem. A pilot transports an Air Marshal accompanying a fugitive to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem. A pilot transports an Air Marshal accompanying a fugitive to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.

• Jared Rosenberg
• Mark Wahlberg
• Michelle Dockery
• Topher Grace
• 1 Critic review

• Director Coleridge

• Jeff (State Trooper #2)

• State Trooper 1
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Flight Risk supposedly started filming on June 16th, but was halted due to the SAG Strike. Recently, however, Gibson's Flight Risk was granted a waiver to resume filming.
• When will Flight Risk be released? Powered by Alexa
• October 18, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Amenaza en el aire
• Mesquite, Nevada, USA
• Hammerstone Studios
• Davis Entertainment
• Flight Risk Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $15,000,000 (estimated)

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lie To Fly’ On FX, About The Alaska Airlines Pilot Who Tried To Crash A Plane While Coming Down From Magic Mushrooms

Where to stream:.

• The New York Times Presents: Lie To Fly
• documentaries

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Lie To Fly is a New York Times Presents documentary, produced and directed by Carmen García Durazo, examines the case of Joe Emerson, a pilot for Alaska Airlines who, in October of 2023, tried to shut down the engines of a flight where he was sitting in the flight deck jump seat. It turned out that Emerson had taken psychedelic mushrooms two days before that flight and was still feeling the effects when he made the move to grab the engine shutdown levers.

LIE TO FLY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In the documentary, Duran interviews Emerson about, his love of flying, his career, and the sudden death of his best friend, which sent him into a mental health spiral that culminated in the October incident. But it’s also about how pilots who are suffering from mental health issues would rather lie to the FAA and/or not seek treatment in order to keep flying. Because of personnel shortages, the agency can put a pilot on deferment for upwards of two years while his or her medical case is reviewed; the minimum is usually six months. But because pilots are grounded as soon as they are prescribed SSRIs, many often don’t even seek treatment.

Durazo also talks to the parents of a young pilot named John Hauser, who was in a similar situation; he was having mental health issues, but felt trapped because if he got help and the medication he needed, he’d be grounded. Hauser ended up killing himself by crashing the small plane he was flying.

In the case of Emerson, he took those mushrooms on a retreat with his friends that weekend, but because of his state of mind, the Psilocybin severely affected his thought process, to the point where, even two days later, he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. As a pilot, he was able to sit in the flight deck jump seat on the Alaskan Airlines flight, and as we hear from audio from the flight deck, as well as Emerson’s recollection, the whole thing took 30 seconds and was quickly deescalated. He even volunteered to be cuffed because he wasn’t sure what he’d do next.

Emerson was at first indicted of 83 counts of attempted murder, but those charges were dropped after a mental health evaluation. He still faces federal charges as well as charges in Oregon, and he lost his job. But his case did prod small changes as to how the FAA treats mental health issues with flight crews, with more changes in the offing.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Like most of the other episodes in The New York Times Presents series, Lie To Fly does a good job of boiling down a complex issue into an well-organized hour. Other good docs in this series are How To Fix A Pageant and Framing Britney Spears .

Performance Worth Watching: The interviews with Joe Emerson and his wife Sarah are fascinating, because they paint a picture of a man who was obviously suffering, but trapped because if he got the help he needed, he wouldn’t be able to do the job he loved.

Memorable Dialogue: Joseph LoRusso, an aviation lawyer who got involved in Emerson’s case, decries how poor the “media outreach” was on the case, with the first clip we see being from Fox News calling the incident a “domestic Kamikaze attack.” LoRusso considers Emerson “a martyr,” because his case is what happens when a mental health issue goes untreated because a person fears for his job.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Duran, the director of Lie To Fly , doesn’t take the sensationalistic approach with Emerson’s story. Yes, the incident he was involved in was well-publicized, but Duran doesn’t give into how it was sensationalized, where it seemed that most news outlets played up the psychedelic mushroom angle to make Emerson seem like he was this insane, wacked out, delusional person that was actively shutting down the engines and being wrestled to the floor.

She takes a more sensible approach, going through what Emerson was facing, including the death of his friend, in the time leading up to the incident. He was also very forthcoming with what the state of his mind was during the incident, what brought him back from the brink — physical touch — and showing exactly how brief the incident really was. He wasn’t tripping out and he wasn’t a “Kamikaze”, as Fox classified the incident; Joe Emerson was a man who was mourning and in pain, unable to get treatment because he knew the consequences of doing so.

The entire issue of how the FAA’s mental health protocols promote pilots and other flight crew members from even seeking treatment gets a little muddled, because the procedure is so complex. But when LoRusso mentions that the agency treats someone who is being treated with medication for depression or anxiety but is otherwise stable the same as someone being treated for schizophrenia, the problem comes into focus.

Yes, the FAA is erring on the side of safety, but, as NTSB chairperson Jennifer Homendy says, their protocols are in the “dark ages.” We would have liked a little more examination as to why that is, which is likely to do with the increase of the number of people being diagnosed with mental health issues. The commensurate increase in cases the short-staffed FAA had to review likely led to the delays that in turn led to pilots and other flight crew to not even seek treatment. It’s a Mobius strip of better understanding of mental health feeding into government inadequacy and back again that seems to be an all-too-familiar story, and we would have liked to have heard more about that.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Lie To Fly takes a sensationalistic incident from the recent past and gives a more complete picture of what caused and led up to it, with a sympathetic portrait of the man at the incident’s center. It’s an informative documentary that will certainly make viewers think hard about what the people flying them everywhere might be dealing with.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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Physical Review B

Covering condensed matter and materials physics.

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Quench-condensed hydrogen films studied by cryogenic time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry

Taku t. suzuki and soshi iimura, phys. rev. b 110 , 085426 – published 22 august 2024.

• No Citing Articles
• Supplemental Material
• INTRODUCTION
• EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL METHODS
• RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Surface melting of solidified hydrogen has attracted attention in the field of superfluidity, but the existence of surface melting of solid hydrogen itself is still controversial. In the present study, we developed cryogenic time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) capable of detecting surface melting by selectively analyzing hydrogen on the outermost surface. Combined with low-energy ion scattering for well-defined film growth, we successfully investigated the surface structural transition of the quenched condensed hydrogen film grown on polycrystalline tungsten substrate below the triple point. It was found that the TOF-SIMS intensity variation of H + ions by increasing the temperature of the solid hydrogen film at a constant ramp rate (temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS) shows two prominent features: the increase accompanied by sublimation, and the decrease due to the elimination of the hydrogen admolecule from the tungsten surface. Both features are well explained by the desorption of hydrogen molecules from the solid surface. We observed no evidence of surface melting.

• Received 22 April 2024
• Revised 4 August 2024
• Accepted 7 August 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.085426

©2024 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

• Research Areas
• Physical Systems

Authors & Affiliations

• National Institute for Materials Science , 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0044, Japan
• * Contact author: [email protected]

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Supplemental material (subscription required), references (subscription required).

Vol. 110, Iss. 8 — 15 August 2024

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Schematic of TOF-SIMS combined with LEIS. The incident ion beam line (2 keV He + ) and the detector (electrostatic energy analyzer) are shared between TOF-SIMS and LEIS to minimize the size of the aperture placed at the radiation shield for the entry and exit of ions.

(a) Schematic of a cryostat used for cryogenic TOF-SIMS. The heat-transfer rod connecting the cold head of the GM refrigerator and the sample is displayed. The 5-mm-thick sapphire plate is used for electrically insulating the sample, which is heated above 1800 K by electron bombardment for surface cleaning. In temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS measurement, the heater placed in the heater block was used to raise the sample temperature at a constant rate. (b) Details around the sample station. The thermal shield made of aluminum around the sample is removed in this picture to see the sample station.

TOF-SIMS spectra of quench-condensed HD film grown on a tungsten polycrystal substrate prepared by exposing it to the HD atmosphere of 100 L below 4 K.

Temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS spectra of H + measured on the quench-condensed hydrogen film on the tungsten substrate. The peak onset temperature and the temperature at which the peak disappears are indicated by solid and dashed arrows labeled (i) and (ii), respectively.

Temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS spectra of D + measured on the quench-condensed hydrogen film grown on the tungsten substrate. The peak onset temperature and the temperature at which the peak disappears are indicated by solid and dashed arrows labeled (i) and (ii), respectively.

Temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS spectra of H + of the H 2 film (solid black curve), H + of the HD film (dotted red curve), and D + of the D 2 film (blue chain curve). The exposure amount is 100 L for all three measurements.

The hydrogen partial pressure measured by QMS during the temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS measurement for the H 2 100 L/W sample. The TOF-SIMS measurement was started immediately after the hydrogen film growth was completed.

Total energy change as a function of hydrogen molecule position along the path leading from the top of the hydrogen-atom-adsorbed W(100) surface to vacuum. In the bottom of the figure, the atomic positions of the initial and final states are shown. Gray and pink circles denote W and hydrogen, respectively.

Temperature-programmed TOF-SIMS spectra of D + of the D 2 100 L/W sample with (solid black squares) and without (open red circles) introducing the D 2 gas of 1 × 10 − 4 Pa during the measurement.

TOF-SIMS intensities of H + (solid black squares) and W-derived cations (open red circles) as a function of exposure to H 2 below 4 K.

Proposed densification mechanism of a quench-condensed hydrogen film by annealing. The low-density hydrogen film grown by quench condensation (a) is densified by desorption during sublimation followed by readsorption after annealing (b).

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