In another incarnation, Flight might be a ridiculous movie; but it isn't because Denzel is in it. John Patterson pays tribute
Flight is one of those movies that makes you wonder if it really deserves the great leading performance that holds it together. As it degenerates from its thrilling opening air crash into a rehab-friendly, cod-religious sobriety tract, one remembers this is a Robert Zemeckis movie, and he is prone to this sort of thing.
Which isn't always a bad thing. There's a shocking opening sequence with Denzel Washington cavorting in a hotel bed with a naked woman (Nadine Velazquez of My Name Is Earl), chugging booze and fighting on the phone with his ex-wife; then leaning in to the camera to snort up a fat rail of cocaine, his face grotesquely distorted in close-up. Cut to the elegant hotel corridor, Gimme Shelter screaming on the soundtrack, and Denzel emerges, swaggering and magnificent in full pilot's uniform, ready to go to work. You might never take a flight again after living through that cut.
As the toxicology reports come in post-disaster, the facts of a broken tail mechanism and of Washington's indubitable resourcefulness and heroism (possibly coke-fuelled) during the disaster fade into the background as the full extent of his addictions becomes clear. The hero in short order becomes the heel, but no matter how rough that ride becomes, there is always a part of one's mind saying, "This guy's a two-car garage, three-bedroom asshole, but Denzel is crushing it!" A lesser actor would have had a very hard time keeping the viewer on his side.
Denzel's career seems emblematic of all the changing pathologies about race in Hollywood over the last four decades. His first role – oh, this is too perfect – was as "Alley Mugger #1", literally bottom of the bill, in Michael Winner's white-backlash cri de guerre Death Wish (Sidney Poitier fought for this?). His first co-starring role was as George Segal's newly discovered grown-up black son in 1981's Carbon Copy, a movie so racially tone-deaf it's rarely seen today. There followed a long slog out of the Poitier Illusion, wherein every black character had to be a superhero and a community role model, as if repeating it ad infinitum would one day obliterate the memory of The Birth Of A Nation, and Amos And Andy (it was a necessary restorative, but sure was boring to live through as a moviegoer). Then Washington forged two enduring creative partnerships, firstly with indie-minded Spike Lee and then – to lubricate and solidify his crossover to colourblind superstardom – with studio-friendly Tony Scott on the other. Really, how could he not succeed? The camera still feasts on his beauty now that he's pushing 60 as hungrily it would on any 1955 MGM contract starlet.
As America has slowly grown up about race, especially in the last 20 years, Denzel has often been the man leading it by the hand, one Oscar at a time. He won't win this year, but he deserves to.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/28/denzel-washington-flight
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