The film contains one of Denzel's loosest, best performances in what has become a strange hangdog period of his A-list movie star career.
Now deep into his sixties, Denzel has almost entirely shed his impeccable good looks. He can still melt hearts with that megawatt style, but he has become the doughy, unstylish facsimile of the deglammed Denzel we know in real life -- Uncle Denzel, if you will.
During this period, which may be the peak of his movie star career, he seems to vacillate between stirring dramas that show off his still formidable actings skills -- like this and later Fences -- and silly, not too smart action thrillers like The Equalizer movies where we're meant to believe he can credibly beat up people half his age.
Needless to say I find the former Denzel more interesting. In these films, he's truly exploring the dark side of his movie star persona. In these films he play men who put up a competent, charismatic and formidable fronts, but unlike his peerless heroes in films like Crimson Tide or even Malcolm X, these heroes are very damaged men underneath.
Flight provides a real showcase for what Denzel can do when he let's his vanity go by the wayside. It opens with his belly hanging out and him on the phone having a flinty, pretty unlikable exchange with his ex-wife on the other end of the phone, while his lover struts around nude. This is your parents' Denzel.
And sure, that can be a bit of a bummer. I like seeing Denzel when he's looking good and kicking ass. And sure, Training Day has its more emotionally wrenching moments, but it also has "King Kong ain't go shit on me" and just oozes cool from start to finish.
His performance in Flight is sometimes hard to watch, not because it's bad by a country mile, but because it's hard to see Denzel the movie star fall so low, break down and admit to being addicted to drugs and alcohol.
"I'm drunk now" should not be an Oscar-worthy line, but coming from Denzel it feels like a really classic movie moment.
The movie surrounding Denzel is shockingly old fashioned, nudity and four letter words aside. It's a pretty heavy handed morality play which literally ends with a coda where its hero-villain repents from prison.
Many critics have rightly called out the incredibly unsubtle music cues in the movie -- a trademark of director Robert Zemeckis -- which blatantly spell out the nature of the scene you are watching. A B-story about the female lead feels truncated and unfocused and the movie does kind of make drugs look pretty damn fun vs. alcoholism.
And yet with all these flaws aside, I love this movie because of Denzel's total commitment to fully realizing his character. Over the course of a little over two hours you really get to know his aptly named Whip Whitaker, warts and all, and while he's actually a pretty irredeemable fellow, he's compelling because he's -- well, Denzel.
He's so electric, so present -- that he forces a movie that could have been mediocre and corny -- but it's pretty riveting -- with an odd structure that probably threw audiences who mostly came to see the plane crash sequence, which does deliver.
It's all worth it because of Denzel. And it's why I go to see (almost) every movie he makes, because even when the movies are bad, he rarely is. And there are only a handful of movie stars I can say that about.
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