Video review: "Flight"

“Flight” is one of those movies that keeps throwing you for loops. Some of the loops are satisfying, while others just leave you discombobulated. The overall experience is worthwhile, even though I often found myself having difficulty getting emotionally invested in what was going on.

Denzel Washington plays “Whip” Whitaker, a veteran airline pilot with a substance abuse problem. He drinks like a fish, snorts cocaine and carouses with a flight attendant mere hours before climbing into the cockpit.

Once he’s in the captain’s chair, though, Whip is all business – seasoned, cocksure and steady. In fact, when the plane suffers a serious mechanical failure, he performs a virtually impossible maneuver to land the plane, saving over 100 lives. He’s lauded as a national hero.

But when an investigation reveals that he was stoned at the time, Whip retreats into a cocoon of self-loathing.

Outwardly confident, he rebuffs attempts from the pilot union chief (Bruce Greenwood) and their power lawyer (Don Cheadle) to assist. He falls in with Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a heroin addict decades his junior, as they help shore up each other’s crumbling identities.

Things slowly build to a big government hearing to assign blame for the crash. Will Whip be lauded or reviled? “Flight” is less about one man’s public journey from hero to reprobate than his descent into himself.

Extra features are on the slim side, especially if you opt for the DVD edition. It comes with ... exactly nothing. No goodies at all.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you do get three featurettes on the making of the film, including a blow-by-blow account of how the stomach-churning crash sequence was created. There are also a few Q&As with the cast and crew.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Review: "Flight"

In his long career Denzel Washington has played a lot of good guys, and a few notable bad ones, but I'm not sure if he's ever played a guy like the one in "Flight."

The story is about a pilot who saves a jet full of passengers when his plane suffers a major malfunction. But in the days that come after the crash, questions arise that throw his heroism, and even his entire self-conception, into chaos.

William "Whip" Whitaker is a puzzle, a mystery wrapped in a cocoon of bravado and patter. He's been fooling everyone else for so long that he's even convinced himself that he fits his role to a T: that of the savvy, calm, cool and collected airline pilot. The image he projects is of a former Navy fighter pilot hot dog turned safe and seasoned commercial captain of the airwaves.

But Whip's got a secret. He drinks. A lot. Does a little coke, too, to bring himself up after the buckets of booze have worn him down. But once he's in the pilot's seat, he reasons, he's all business.

Except that one fateful day something on the plane breaks, and Whip and his green co-pilot (Brian Geraghty) are forced to undertake a risky crash-landing maneuver. The upshot: a lot of people are hurt, but only six out of 102 are killed. People are calling it a miracle. The media is buzzing. In simulated recreations, no other pilot is able to replicate Whip's daring deed.

And yet, the blood tests say he was legally drunk when he did this.

From there, the story takes on an unsteady rhythm, as the narrative meanders here and pools there. The original script by John Gatins goes in directions we don't expect; some of them pay off, and others don't.

Whip is confronted by federal investigators, as well as the friendly head of the pilot's union (Bruce Greenwood) and the slick lawyer they've retained (Don Cheadle). Their job, they say, is to protect Whip. But the odds are dire -- he could end up lauded as a hero, another Sully Sullenberger, or put in jail forever.

His first reaction is like the rest of his life up to now: bluster. No one else could have landed that plan and saved those lives like I did, he proclaims. To him it makes no difference if he was legally impaired at the time, since obviously the booze and drugs didn't affect him enough to prevent him from amazing actions.

But slowly Whip descends into a torpor, hiding out at his grandfather's abandoned farm, swilling astonishing amounts of liquor. We get the sense we're seeing the real man Whip hides from the world, one who's self-pitying, arrogant and not a little pathetic.

In the hospital he meets Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a woman who overdosed on heroin. Her life is falling apart in much the same way as Whip's. Seeing a kindred soul in need, he gives her a place to stay when her money runs out. It's an unspoken but mutually understood arrangement that she will give herself physically to him as a reward.

Things build, slowly, to the big hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board. Will Whip straighten himself up in time to put on a convincing show? Can his lawyer get the toxicology report thrown out?
As it turns out, the movie is not really about these things. Rather, it's an exploration of a man's fragile psyche, and if he can recognize the failings underneath his brave veneer of competence.

This is the first live-action movie Robert Zemeckis has directed since 2000's "Cast Away," after an often regrettable decade exploring motion-capture animation. In many ways "Flight" is a return to familiar ground. Instead of being physically isolated, Whip is marooned emotionally. The trick to getting out of his trap is peering deep into his own self-reflection.

It's an engaging picture, and not for a moment was I ever bored. But I never quite got viscerally hooked into Whip's dilemma, or felt like we ever get to really know him. As hard as it is for him to reach out for help, we never quite get a grip on him.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Real Steel"

Every year spawns a few movies that fall into the "love-it-or-hate-it" category, or in the case of "Real Steel," the "like-it-or-hate-it" flick of 2011. Several of my local film critic colleagues have even seen fit to toss it onto their "Worst of the Year" list.

Though hardly a cinematic knockout, I found it to be an amusing, if admittedly overly sappy father/son redemption story with impressively cool robots -- "The Champ" with Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Actually, since the movie came I finally figured out why the boxing robots in the movie are so evocative: they bear a startling resemblance to the iron football goon used in promotional bits for NFL games on Fox. People who might abhor the visceral thrill of boxing and other human blood sport can safely revel in watching two automatons turn each other into scrap metal.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former contender in the ring who became a manager of robots when human boxing was outlawed. (The story is set in the near future.) Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Charlie is forced to take Max (Dakota Goya), the son he never met, on the road with him, where they bond through a sequence of misadventures.

Their fortunes take a turn for the better when they uncover a mysterious robot fighter buried in a junkyard, dub him Atom, and before long they're headed to the championship bout.

The CGI battles hit that sweet spot where the robots are just humanistic enough that the audience feels like it has a stake in the outcome, but can safely cheer on the mayhem. We certainly feel more for Atom than we did any of the Transformers in their movies.

"Real Steel" may be overly maudlin, but as lightweight entertainment with a little heart, it's the real deal.

Extras for DVD are fairly OK: a blooper reel, two making-of featurettes, and audio commentary by director Shawn Levy.

The blu-ray edition includes a few upgrades, the centerpiece of which is an interactive "second screen" with videos and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Plus deleted and extended scenes and two more featurettes, including one about Sugar Ray Leonard, who served as boxing consultant on the production.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Real Steel"

With "Real Steel," I was expecting a slick and soulless bit of computer-generated mayhem. The story is set about a decade or so in the future, where regular human boxing has been outlawed and the only kind allowed is between 2,000-pound robots.

In other words, "Rocky" meets "Transformers."

What I got instead was a tender and treacly tale about a no-account father bonding with his long-lost (well, abandoned) son. If anything, the movie went too far in the other direction from my expectations . Instead of being overly reliant on special effects for cheap action thrills, it's really a somewhat maudlin story with an excess of gooey emotions.

So, "Transformers" meets "The Champ."

Hugh Jackman plays the dad, Charlie Kenton, a former fighter who always went for the knockout -- and got it a lot, but also ended up on the mat a lot. He's much the same as a robot owner/manager, always seeking the big payoff in the big fight when what he really needs is a few sure things under his belt.

Dakota Goyo plays Max, the son he's barely even met. When his mother dies, it's up to the courts to decide if Max goes with Charlie or with his rich aunt (Hope Davis). Charlie extorts 50 grand out of his sister-in-law's husband to give up custody, but not until the end of summer so they can enjoy a swanky European vacation.

It's all just an excuse to get Charlie on the road with Max, hustling fights and trying to keep their last aging robot on its feet. Charlie uses the extortion money to buy a fancy, famous robot named Noisy Boy, but doesn't even bother to learn the functions of the gizmo's voice command system before pitting him against an opponent against which he's clearly overmatched.

Soon Charlie and Max are out of robots, with a killer cowboy named Ricky on their tail for the money he's owed. Ricky is played by Kevin Durand, who can just look into the camera for three seconds and be scary.

Then Max stumbles upon an old rust-bucket robot buried in a junkyard, names him Atom and proceeds to train him with his dad's reluctant help, putting them on an unlikely path to the championship fight.

The best thing about "Real Steel" are the robots, which seem to convincingly occupy the same space as the humans. Using a combination of CGI and animatronics, they're hefty, clanky behemoths that not coincidentally resemble giant versions of the old Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Robot boxing is perhaps the logical evolution of cinematic boxing. People have often complained that more punches are landed in a single round of a movie bout than a dozen real ones -- no human can take such punishment. With mammoth metal automatons, it stands to reason they can take a licking.

Especially Atom. One of the curious things about the story (screenplay by John Gatins, based on a sci-fi story from the 1950s by Richard Matheson) is that Atom's origins remain stubbornly mysterious. He's an older-generation robot, but boasts a few cutting-edge tricks like a "shadow function" that allows him to mimic Charlie's boxing moves. Built as a sparring robot, Atom can take a ton of hits, but is relatively small and weak on offense.

The top champ is a fearsome robot named Zeus, who not only has never lost a fight, but never had an opponent last beyond the first round. Yet Zeus' Russian oligarch owner, Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda), and Japanese programmer, Tak Mashido (Karl Yune), exchange troubled looks when they lay eyes on Atom, as if a mechanical ghost had just lumbered across their grave.

Director Shawn Levy is a certified lightweight ("Night at the Museum") who always goes for the easiest emotional payoff. But Jackman's lovable as a loser, Goyo has spunk and charm, and the robot battles are genuinely thrilling.

3 stars out of four