Flight

Grade: B

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood and Kelly Reilly

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 8 min.

For quite some time, I’ve had an idea for a movie. The basic premise involves an everyman who wins the lottery, seemingly guaranteeing him lifelong security and happiness. However, this seminal event soon alienates him from suddenly envious, greedy friends and family. Moreover, his newfound celebrity status becomes an albatross once the 24-hour media that builds him up uncovers and airs his personal foibles (an old arrest here, an extramarital affair there) in their insatiable hunt for tomorrow’s headline or talking point.

It’s perilous to evaluate a movie based on what you hoped it might be. Still, Flight had the potential to dissect that tragic arc of the accidental celebrity. Captain William “Whip” Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is an airline pilot who executes a miraculous crash landing of his suddenly freefalling plane en route from Orlando to Atlanta, saving all but a few of its 102 passengers. Although rightly hailed as a hero, Whip is also secretly an alcoholic and drug user whose demons destroyed his marriage and estranged him from his teenage son.

The key additional plot point is that Whip was also drunk and coked up during his aerial miracle, needing to ingest both substances together in order to achieve inflight acuity—to “level him off,” so to speak. So instead of a critique on contemporary culture, director Robert Zemeckis makes Flight a character study more akin to The Lost Weekend or Leaving Las Vegas. Alternating episodes of binge boozing and short-lived sobriety become the film’s repetitive refrain, often in concert with Whip’s newfound (and rather improbable) relationship with Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a recovering heroin junkie hoping to steer the captain towards sobriety.

Directing his first live-action film since 2000’s Cast Away, Zemeckis still knows how to assemble impressive set pieces. A taut takeoff through storm-cloud turbulence is only a table setter for the amazing crash sequence, whose one of the most breathless scenes in recent cinema. Still, every protracted exchange between Whip and Nicole stops the film dead in its tracks when it should be focusing on the procedural particulars of the ever-tightening investigation into the plane crash and the efforts by a pilot’s union rep (Bruce Greenwood) and lawyer (Don Cheadle) to save Whip’s self-destructive backside.

No time is devoted to the undoubtedly conflicted feelings of the passengers whose lives Whip saved or the families of those who didn’t survive. And while the emotional pain is palpable when Whip strong-arms the loyalty of Margaret (Tamara Tunie), his flight attendant and an old friend well aware of Whip’s addictions, a visit to his crippled copilot is used as an occasion for religious mockery. The sight of Whip’s foundering airplane clipping the steeple off a rural church serves a similar subversion, along with the sardonic testimonial by a terminal cancer patient (James Badge Dale) who Whip and Nicole meet while sneaking ciggies in the hospital stairwell.

Ever the Steven Spielberg protégé, Zemeckis can’t resist his mentor’s penchant for soppy endings and heavy-handed metaphors, or his own crutch of classic-rock music cues. Buttressed by another career-defining performance from Washington, the ill-fated aircraft parallels the path of its protagonist: a life in free fall that must be inverted to level off its descent before a crash landing that starts him down a course of introspection and redemption. Still, Flight could have cast a wider cultural net about the media, hero (de)construction and survivor guilt, not just the story of one self-absorbed antihero.

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com 

Star Trek

One Trek Hill

Grade: B +

Director: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, and Simon Pegg

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

I’ll give this to J.J. Abrams: I never thought I would hear the Beastie Boys in a Star Trek movie. Yet, as a pre-pubescent James T. Kirk improbably barrels down an Iowa byway behind the wheel of a vintage C2 Corvette convertible, cheating both death and the pursuing police, the unbridled strains of “Sabotage” just seem to fit, no matter the stardate.

With its Gen-Y tableau and whiz-bang F/X, this isn’t your father’s Star Trek. And, although it is set during the formative years of the crew of the Starship Enterprise, it is not strictly a prequel. Rather, it is an alternate timeline, visited by a Romulan marauder from the future named Nero (Eric Bana), who’s looking to exact revenge on the Federation and one particular native of Vulcan for failing to save Nero’s planet from destruction.

Still, the homage Abrams employs is more dedicated to the original Trek television series rather than the Trek films and The Next Generation series that Abrams felt “disconnected” from. There are the familiar chuckles about the accent of Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and the irascibility of Dr. ‘Bones’ McCoy (Karl Urban), along with such inside-Trekdom allusions as the fencing skills of Sulu (John Cho) and Kirk’s bedding of a green-skinned Orion cadet. Introducing a romantic dalliance between Spock and a young Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana) shrewdly illuminates her flirtations with him during a few early episodes of the original series. And, among the superlative casting, choosing Simon Pegg as a brash, uproarious Montgomery “Scotty” Scott proves particularly brilliant.

But, for screenwriters and longtime Abrams collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the story of Star Trek was always about Kirk and Spock. The early, uneasy years of their relationship are the backbone of this film as the ambitious, combative Kirk (Chris Pine, pitch-perfect) clashes with the cerebral, no-nonsense Spock (Zachary Quinto, ditto). Young Kirk’s goal is to occupy the captain’s chair, while Spock’s priority is keeping Kirk out of it, and even off the Enterprise altogether. The original Trek TV series launched during the Cold War and served up allegory for two conflicting approaches of American foreign policy: Kirk’s aggressive moralism versus Spock’s logical pragmatism. It is a dichotomy that has come full circle in our post-Sept. 11 world, although I would stop short of analogizing Kirk and Spock with George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Still, it’s fascinating that the ultimate resolution of their clash of ideologies and governing styles—and with it the crux of Star Trek’s storyline—lies in not just peaceful coexistence, but the necessity of Kirk’s accession to leader with Spock remaining the faithful, intelligent advisor.

The irony, however, is that despite Abrams’ faithful interpretation of the Trek universe, his film sizzles most when not mired in its iconography. The elaboration of Kirk’s and Spock’s boyhood roots is intriguing, including Winona Ryder as Spock’s mom (a role once played by Jane Wyatt). And, wider roles for Uhura and Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) further this film’s goal of amplifying the Trek mythos.

But, the film’s most prominent cameo, 78-year-old Leonard Nimoy as an elder Spock, elicits both nostalgic glee and a whiff of musty air. Abrams walks a tightrope in trying to craft a fresh action movie that also appeals to Star Trek purists. The time-jumping (and hole-filled) plot, together with Nimoy’s appearance, go a long way toward accomplishing the latter while also allowing Abrams the leeway to deviate from the Trek canon, in this film as well as its inevitable sequels.

However, all symbolism aside, the Kirk/ Spock rapport has already been explored at considerable length during the first six Star Trek movies. More of the same is, well, more of the same. When Nimoy’s Spock introduces himself to the younger Kirk by reprising the declaration that “I have been and always shall be your friend,” it only made me want to watch The Wrath of Khan again.

The distinguishing feature is that Abrams, a clever and skilled filmmaker, understands how to make a rock-’em sock-’em piece of entertainment that can stand alone without its iconic underpinning. The action sequences are dazzling and fly toward the audience at warp speed, bolstered by a superb cast and the always-reliable Michael Giacchino’s exhilarating score. In short, Abrams boldly goes where no Trek movie has gone before, at least not since 1982. Set your phasers on “fun,” along with “impressed” and “relieved.”

Neil Morris