Flight
Short description
Flight is a 2012 American drama about Whip Whitaker, an airline pilot whose routine trip out of Orlando goes badly wrong when the aircraft runs into severe weather and then suffers a mechanical failure that sends it diving toward the ground. Whip manages a risky manoeuvre and sets the plane down, saving nearly everyone on board; the handful of deaths notwithstanding, the media and the public treat him as a hero. The trouble is that he had been drinking and using drugs before taking the controls, and as investigators work out what happened, the evidence turns against the man being celebrated. The film follows both the inquiry and his attempts to face his addiction, with the question of how much credit he deserves for the landing hanging over everything.
Robert Zemeckis directed, working from a screenplay by John Gatins, and produced alongside Steve Starkey and Walter F. Parkes. It was the seventeenth of the twenty-three features Zemeckis has directed in chronological order, arriving after A Christmas Carol and before The Walk, and it marked his return to live-action filmmaking after a run of performance-capture animation. Denzel Washington leads as Whip, with Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood and Brian Geraghty in supporting roles.
Made for about 31 million dollars, Flight took in roughly 162 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from around 396,000 votes and on TMDB 6.9/10 from a much smaller pool of about 6,600, while a critics' rating of 7/10 across 239 reviews places it broadly in line with how audiences received it.
What's left behind the scenes
- Robert Zemeckis' first film with live actors since the release of "Cast Away" (2000).
- Robert Zemeckis' first film to receive an R rating since "Used Cars" (1980) and the second film with such a rating overall out of all films directed by Zemeckis (as of September 2012).
- According to producers Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke, the main airplane in the film is a composite of several existing commercial airliners, so that it would be impossible to identify any specific airplane or airline in the film. Furthermore, there were no advertising fees from any of the alcohol brands shown in the film, and it was decided to show each brand of beer, wine, and spirits only once, so as not to favor any particular brand.
- While the circumstances of the crash depicted in the film may seem somewhat unbelievable to viewers, there are some parallels to real life. In 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261 went out of control when the tail section suddenly failed, and the pilots attempted to regain control of the aircraft while flying upside down. They maintained this position for over a minute. Their attempt ultimately failed, and it ended in a crash in the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles (everyone on board perished).
- At the beginning of the hearing, Chairman Helen Block states that according to the equipment data, the failure occurred exactly 27 minutes after the start of the flight, which contradicts the testimony of the second pilot, who told the flight attendant that the captain had fallen asleep at the controls for 26 minutes, after initially taking off, flying through a thunderstorm, chatting with passengers while preparing an alcoholic cocktail, etc.
- Whip refers to his father’s unit – a Tuskegee Airman from World War II – as Airborne, when the correct term is Air Corps.
- When Whip asks Nicole where she is staying, she replies that she is at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, but her room is in Georgian Gardens. The Georgian Terrace is a well-known hotel where actors often stay when filming in Atlanta.
- The greeting on the Whitaker's answering machine is shorter when we hear it the second time.
- When Whip wakes up in the hospital, he is told he is in a hospital south of Atlanta. Later, he looks out the window at the Concourse Buildings mansions (nicknamed 'King' and 'Queen'), which are located north of Atlanta.
- In the scenes immediately before the crash, the first officer extinguishes a fire in the right engine by pulling a T-handle. A minute later, he does the same for the left engine. In emergency situations, such handles are pulled to extinguish engine fires, but this not only extinguishes the fire itself, but also completely isolates the engine from the aircraft. Fuel, hydraulic, electrical, and air systems are completely shut off, resulting in the engine shutting down completely. However, during this scene in the film, the engines continue to run after these handles are pulled, and the captain even gives orders to change engine power.
- When Whip looks at his iPhone, the lock screen displays the date October 20th, while the calendar on the desktop shows the 8th.
- While Whip is lying in the hospital bed, an agent from the National Transportation Safety Board attaches a dictaphone. The light on the dictaphone is flashing red, indicating that it is paused in recording mode. If it were recording, the red indicator would glow steadily. And at the very end, when the agent turns off the dictaphone, the indicator begins to glow without flashing, meaning recording has started.
- Olivia Wilde and Dominique McElligott were considered for the role of Nicole.
- The story is reminiscent of events that took place in 2001, when Canadian Captain Robert Piché landed an Airbus 330 after both engines failed, saving 306 passengers from certain death. Becoming a hero literally overnight, he quickly experienced the flip side of the coin when a journalist exposed his long-forgotten criminal past and personal life. However, the plane did not fly upside down. The film reflects the story of his life rather than the landing incident itself.
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