Friday, February 8, 2013

This movie didn't really take off













This one looked very promising, an interesting story and a great cast. Unfortunately it's a bit of a crash and burn, pun intended. It's a story about Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), one of the best pilots in the world, whose amazing maneuvers in a plane crash save over a hundred lives, but still 6 people end up dead. Then the crash is being investigated and things start to look bad. There's a huge flaw in this movie. It's that the main character is basically a jerk. And the biggest problem was that the movie makes it very clear right from the start. So my feelings for the movie went something like this;
  • He's quite a jerk
  • Daaamn that jerk can fly!
  • John Goodman is great!
  • What does this drug addict have to do with the movie?
  • Oh, Whip is horny for the addict, that's why
  • Maybe he's not a complete jerk after all
  • Nope, he's still a jerk
  • Oh there was that plane crash investigation going on as well
  • Don Cheadle is also quite good
  • Could there possibly be some hope for the jerk?
  • Nope, why would I even think of that?
  • Denzel Washington can't really act like a drunk person
  • Now he's being a straight out dick
  • I guess the question is will he redeem himself at the end?
To be honest by that time I already lost every bit of interest to the character and couldn't care less. Why would they right from the start establish the main character as an alcoholic self centered drug abusing jerk? And then the rest of the movie is about whether he can redeem himself or not. Everything else is nonessential after that. The intriguing plane crash and especially what follows after that loses all it's meaning. Had they not establish that in the start and leave it as kind of a surprise later on this movie would have worked a lot better. After all it's not totally a bad movie, most of the cast pull off their roles very nicely and the story is interesting. Too bad it's told in this way.
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