Just saw it tonight.
Wow, I have to say this one really surprised me. I was rather bored the opening moments, but from the plane crash on…I was gripped.
Excellent movie and quite a portrait of substance abuse.
I was genuinely moved at the end and several times throughout. I think Denzel is in the top-running for performance of the year.
Go see it.
Did anyone else see it?
I was put off by the very deceptive advertising campaign-“Black Hero Railroaded By Airline Industry.”
I saw it about a month or so ago. It was very good and I was surprised at the turn the movie took - I thought it was going to be a procedural (police, crash investigation, something like that) and instead turned into a character study about alcoholism.
I’ve seen a lot of films lately with John Goodman in supporting roles - this was his best.
However, I think Denzel is going to be overlooked, but he did give an outstanding performance.
I haven’t seen the campaign. Can you link to ads for it?
I was turned off by the ad campaign, which did make it look like it was an airline crash investigation movie, but went to see it because I read that it was actually a substance abuse movie, which is a favorite genre of mine. I enjoyed it, but even though it hasn’t been very long since I saw it, it’s already fading from my memory. I do remember that Kelly Reilly gave an extraordinary performance that I think is Oscar-worthy.
Was she the heroin addict? Yes, I thought she did a great job, as if she was living the role instead of playing it.
Great movie. The movie indeed went in a different direction than the trailors seem to suggest. More people need to see this.
Well, this is a disappointment. I thought the poster was on a flight with Denzel Washington and was going to dish.
Never even heard of this movie.
Just saw it last night.
I dropped all preconceived notions when I was sucker-punched by some awesome nudity in the very first scene!!!
Ermmm, and the rest of the movie was pretty good too.
Did any of our resident pilots happen to see this movie? I saw scenes in the trailer about how Denzel heroically saved lives (when no one else would have) by acting against conventional wisdom and keeping the plane upside-down (for a short time, presumably). Movies usually get aviation stuff very wrong. Now, there may be a very rare set of circumstances in which this might make sense; perhaps the elevator is jammed full nose-down, and he rolled inverted rather than just dive straight into the ground. But that still leaves a lot of questions, and Hollywood has not left me optimistic about things like this.
So if anyone has seen it, are the flying scenes remotely realistic, or will pilots be laughing at this movie?
I have no idea if it was presented authentically or not, but apparently the specifics were based on a crash where the pilots attempted the same technique- though not successfully unfortunately.
From the Wiki page:
The nudity was definitely authentic- and how!
Wow, not too many posts about this movie eh? I just saw it last night on DVD after missing it in the theaters. I thought DW and Kelly Reilly were great.
My caveats are 1) I have no aviation experience and 2) no experience with addiction; so I can’t really speak to authenticity. I thought Whip’s change of heart in the film’s climactic scene was a little too Hollywood-ish, but it was satisfying. The crash scene itself was electrifying.
I do disagree with the poster above about John Goodman; I thought he was too cartoonish. I liked him better this year in Argo.
I may be in the minority, but I liked the spiritual overtones in the film as well. The guy with cancer in the stairwell whose advice is to stop trying to control everything yourself, and recognize that random events are acts of God - that tied in neatly with Don Cheadle’s lawyer getting “Act of God” added as a cause of the crash on the NTSB report, as well as the survivors being rescued from the crash by a group of pentacostals in their baptismal gowns.
This is exactly how the crash is finally explained in the movie - the jackscrew breaks and the elevator is jammed full down, and inverting the plane for a short time allows the pilot to reach an empty field instead of crashing into a tract of houses. Don’t know how realistic that is, though.
ETA: Oh yeah.. what was a great nude scene. 
I thought so too. Or, at least, when I read a review, it turn out that the movie was different than I think I was led to believe.
Same here. I just watched the film over the weekend and really enjoyed it. It was not what I had expected at all. At just over 2 hours, it was kind of long, but it held my interest throughout.
Denzel was far better in St. Elsewhere and Unstoppable than in this mess of a film. It was not what I expected it to be, but for me, that was in a negative way.
I saw it over the weekend. I think I was fortunate in that I tried to have no preconceptions about it going in. As it turns out, it wasn’t about airplanes at all!
I loved the ending.
And while DW and JG were great, I have to give massive props to Don Cheadle. That guy never fails to amaze me.
Can you elaborate? I enjoyed Unstoppable (and St. Elsewhere back in the day) but I found this to be a much more thoughtful and provocative film.
I saw it on DVD last week. Like some others, I got the impression from the commercials that the story was about a plane crash caused by defective parts but that was being blamed on pilot error. But aside from that confusion, I liked it. One question, though. In the film, someone said that the airline or the NTSB put about ten other pilots in simulators and tried to recreate the accident. All would have crashed the plane with no survivors. So Denzel’s character did a remarkable job, despite being drunk and high during the flight. So would he have done any better sober? And, also, if he had not drunk the alcohol onboard, would it have gone better for him? (His lawyer got his positive drug test excluded, so it couldn’t be used as evidence.)
For one thing, there was a gratuitous nude scene at the top. Don’t know what else, though.