In 2001 Denzel Washington won his first Best Actor Academy Award. The movie was Training Day and Washington’s performance as the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department narcotics officer Alonzo Harris established the actor’s propensity for playing ambiguous antiheroes.
Is there another A-list leading man who explores the dark side of his characters as often as Washington? Will Smith and Tom Cruise occasionally let the heroic side of their on-screen personas take a back seat, but Washington revels in mucking around in the mud. From Training Day to American Gangster, Safe House to Flight, he has crafted complex characters you wouldn’t want to sit next to on the bus.
This weekend he’s back as Robert McCall, home improvement store manager by day, equalizer of odds by night. Based on the cult 1980s television show The Equalizer starring Edward Woodward, the film begins with the former black ops commando trying to leave his violent ways in the past. He meets his greatest adversary just when he thought that part of his life was over. Namely, the Russian mob leans on him after he tries to protect a young woman (Chloë Grace Moretz) from her pimp.
No other superstar seems as comfortable with moral haziness as Washington. In American Gangster, for instance, he was Frank Lucas, the one-time driver for a Harlem mob boss who rose to the top of the drug world by flooding the streets of Manhattan with cheap, high-grade heroin smuggled into the United States in the coffins of dead soldiers returning from Vietnam. He’s a dichotomy — bloodthirsty and ruthless, but he also attends church every Sunday with his mother.
In Flight, he played troubled pilot Whip Whitaker, an anti-hero who is functional in day-to-day life despite his predilection for wine, women and cocaine. He’s charming one minute, enraged the next and passed out on the floor the minute after that. Washington manages to subtly capture the ego and hubris that allows Whitaker to present a sober face to the public while bringing us into the messy world of addiction.
The actor has played his share of assorted good guys over the years — Ricochet’s cop-turned-attorney and Don Pedro of Aragon in Much Ado About Nothing — but it is his willingness to mine the heroism of the nasty men he plays that makes him one of the most interesting A-listers.
Nervous flyers will not enjoy the first half hour of “Flight,” the new film from “Castaway” director Robert Zemeckis and star Denzel Washington. If the nervous nellies can make it through the highflying plane crash that serves as the catalyst for the personal story of a troubled pilot (Washington), however, they are in a more earthbound tale of excess and expectation.
When we first meet Whip (Washington) it’s 7:14 in the am and he is hours away from piloting short haul flight Southjet 227 from Orlando to Atlanta. He’s also simultaneously arguing with his ex-wife on the phone, drinking beer, snorting cocaine and watching his girlfriend, a flight attendant get dressed after a wild night in a generic hotel room.
Hours later he’s behind the wheel of a jet, piloting it and the 102 on-board souls. After successfully navigating around a patch of brutal turbulence a mechanical malfunction threatens to down the plane. It is Whit’s expertise, and the audacious move of inverting the plane so it can glide to relative safety, that saves 96 of the 102 passengers and crew.
Hailed as a hero at first, soon his unsavory personal habits bring him under suspicion. Was it a malfunction of a mechanical or personal nature that brought the plane down?
Is there another a-list leading man who explores the dark sides of their characters as often as Washington? Will Smith and Tom Cruise will occasionally let the heroic side of their on-screen personas take a back seat, but Washington revels in mucking around in the mud. From “Training Day” to “American Gangster” and “Safe House” he crafts complex characters you wouldn’t want to sit next to on the bus.
Whit is a different take on this theme, however. This time around the anti-hero is functional in day-to-day life despite his predilection for wine, woman and cocaine. He’s charming one minute, enraged the next and passed out on the floor the minute after that.
Denzel manages to subtly capture the ego and hubris that allows Whit to present a sober face to the public, even though the film’s visual language is frequently not as refined. A close-up of Washington’s hand grasping a mini bottle of vodka and the accompanying swoosh sound looks like something that should be in a commercial not in a film about the effects of alcoholism.
“Flight” is a quiet movie about troubled people, acts of god, ethical questions about accepting responsibility and the callousness of business in the wake of tragedy. It’s about a lot of things, many of which Zemeckis simply flits around before moving on, but at its core is Washington, who despite an unnecessary redemptive ending, effectively brings us into the messy world of addiction.
SYNOPSIS: Denzel Washington plays a troubled airline pilot who safely lands a malfunctioning plane, saving 96 of the 102 people passengers and crew. Hailed as a hero at first, soon his unsavory personal habits bring him under suspicion. Was it a malfunction of a mechanical or personal nature that brought the plane down?
Star Ratings:
Richard: 3 Stars
Ned: 2 ½ Stars
Richard: Ned, is there another a-list leading man who explores the dark sides of their characters as often as Washington? Will Smith and Tom Cruise will occasionally let the heroic side of their on-screen personas take a back seat, but Washington revels in mucking around in the mud. From Training Day to American Gangster and Safe House he crafts complex characters you wouldn’t want to sit next to on the bus. Do you think this is Oscar worthy?
Ned: As far as A-listers in love with the dark side, it’s pretty much Washington and Leo DiCaprio, who I don’t think has smiled onscreen since Catch Me If You Can. And Washington gets plenty murky here — so much so that it made me wonder if we’d be rooting for this character at all if it were played by someone else. Let’s face it, the booze- and coke-addled pilot he plays here only has one attractive characteristic: looking and sounding like Denzel Washington. As for Oscar-worthy, I’m not so sure on this one.
RC: I thought he managed to subtly capture the ego and hubris that allows his hotshot character to present a sober face to the public, even though the film’s visual language is frequently not as refined. A close-up of Washington’s hand grasping a mini bottle of vodka and the accompanying swoosh sound looks like something that should be in a commercial not in a film about the effects of alcoholism.
NE: The tone of the film in general seemed to be all over the place. Who knows, maybe the whole film was supposed to seem drunk? In any event, it didn’t work for me. His hitting rock bottom is played for laughs, and Kelly Riley — as the recovering heroin addict he shacks up with for… some reason — seems to be literally in a different movie for the first 30 minutes or so. And as movies about alcoholism go, it probably doesn’t do Flight any favors to come out so soon after the much more nuanced and devastating Smashed.
RC: I think Smashed is a much more touching and effective story about addiction. As much as I enjoyed Washington, I wish the movie had been more concise. It flits around a half-dozen themes before the end credits roll which is two or three too many.
NE: Overall, the movie left me cold. It starts great — with thrilling takeoff and crash-landing sequences as the highlights, but it’s flat and uneven from then on until the moral kicks in without warning.
By Richard Crouse – Metro – In Focus
