Flight (***)

As with Saving Private Ryan, Flight features a terrifyingly riveting early sequence than nearly overshadows the merely competent drama that follows. Here that involves unhappily divorced Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), who begins the most memorable day of his life by finishing off last night’s beer, saying a temporary goodbye to the much-younger flight attendant who shared his bed, perking up with a bit of cocaine, and heading for work. He’s a pilot, and will become a hero, but one with a secret. It’s better not to know exactly how; credit must go to screenwriter John Gatlin (Real Steel, Coach Carter), who has come up with a novel scenario.

The rest of the film is no thriller, but plays out a conflict that is mostly interior, with Washington in virtually every scene. Notable supporting roles belong to Kelly Reilly as a woman whose own struggles draw her to Whip, John Goodman as Whip’s personal Dr. Feelgood, Bruce Greenwood as a former colleague, and Don Cheadle as Whip’s lawyer. Goodman supplies light humor, but I’d have most wanted Cheadle’s role to be larger. Liability law as it pertains to the aviation industry may not be a box-office draw, but I might’ve have liked the story as a legal thriller. At least it would have been novel. Aside from this aspect, there’s nothing here that wasn’t done in Days of Wine and Roses, with its melancholy Henry Mancini soundtrack, or The Lost Weekend. As for Washington, he is best at projecting an implacable exterior; playing a man falling apart, he is no Jack Lemmon, but he excels at the scenes in which he’s trying to hold it together. Meanwhile, director Bob Zemeckis, better known for breezier fare like Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, keeps the story from seeming ponderous and imbues an easily anticipated outcome with some suspense.

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viewed 10/27/12 7:00 pm at Annenberg Zellerbach Theater [Philadelphia Film Festival closing night screening]