Hey everyone. Welcome back to Movie Recap. Today I'm gonna
show you a 2012 American drama film called, Flight.
In the opening scene in a hotel room, Whip Whitaker wakes up before
it's time to take off on a new flight, after an evening of drinking, drugs and meat injection session with
one of his plane's flight attendants, Katerina Marquez who crawls out of
his bed to get dressed. Still trying to rouse himself from his hangover, his phone rings,
and he answers a call from his ex-wife Deana. Deana wants to discuss
putting their son through a private school, but Whip doesn't want to discuss it at the moment,
claiming he'll talk to her about it when he gets back to Atlanta.
While Katerina quickly heads off to the airport to prepare,
Whip is unable to collect himself until he snorts a line of "Baby Powder." This wakes him up,
and he is next headed to the airport, where rain pounds the building and the airplanes.
Whip does a quick inspection of the airplane and then boards it speaking with a flight attendant
named Margaret and meeting his co-pilot Ken Evans.
Ken seems a little apprehensive of Whip, who is wearing sunglasses and takes a
hit from his oxygen mask, but goes along with his story that he's alright to fly.
The plane takes off through rain, and Whip pushes it higher and faster, attempting to
find a break in the clouds. As they zip through the weather system, Whip has Ken report to flight
control that they're diverting from their intended path slightly to avoid weather.
However, once Whip finds a break in the storm, the plane stabilizes, and the passengers applaud.
Shortly after takeoff, Whip addresses the passengers personally,
apologizing for the rough ride, while covertly pouring three mini-vodka bottles
into a bottle of orange juice. After disposing of the bottles,
Whip returns to the cockpit, and naps after turning control of the plane over to Ken.
On the ground, in a small town in Georgia, a prostitute, Nicole leaves a
hotel after a night with a client and calls her drug connection from her cell phone.
She shows up at the guy's place where a porno film is being shot and buys a small quantity of "Black Pearl"
from him, he warns her not to shoot too much because it hasn't been cut properly. He also asks
her to play a part in the movie but she refuses and leaves. At home she finds her sleazy complex
manager in her apartment. The two argue over her unpaid rent and he propositions her sexually.
She coaxes him out the door and slams it in his face. Spotting a hypodermic needle in her things,
she takes a hit of the drugs she bought from her connection and passes out from an overdose.
Meanwhile, on the flight, Whip is asleep in his chair while Ken monitors the flight.
Margaret marvels at Whip's ability to sleep like he does and then tells Ken he'll have to wake
him up in preparation for their landing. Ken is about to wake Whip up when sudden jolt hits the
plane and it suddenly pitches into an uncontrolled dive. Steering mechanisms don't respond, and the
hydraulics that control the plane won't respond. Staying relatively calm, Whip has the plane's
fuel ditched and tries several different emergency maneuvers to bring the plane back under control.
He has Margaret join himself and Ken in the cockpit to help and also has her tell her
son she loves him for the flight recorder. All of Whip's attempts to right the plane fail before he
tries a crazy maneuver, roll the airplane so they're flying inverted, which will buy them
some time to find a safer landing spot. One of the stewardesses, Camila, leaves her seat to aid some
of the passengers and is knocked unconscious when the plane lurches violently. She is pitched onto
the ceiling of the cabin when the plane rolls. A young boy falls out of his seat when the plane
rolls over and Katerina unbuckles herself, lifts the boy back into his seat and buckles him in.
With Ken and Margaret's help, Whip inverts the plane again, leveling it out, before rolling
it to crash-land on its belly in a field near a small church, the plane's wing collides with the
church's tower, shearing it off. The ground impact slams Whip's head against the steering yoke,
knocking him out. Whip regains consciousness long enough to see himself being dragged out
of the plane by the local parishioners and long enough to see Ken is slumped over in his seat,
unconscious and bleeding severely from his head. Margaret is also bleeding and screaming.
Katerina's body also lies near Margaret, her head under a steel plate and presumably dead.
Just before the plane crash lands, it flies inverted directly over Nicole's
apartment complex where we see her being taken out on a stretcher.
Whip wakes up in a hospital where he finds his friend Charlie Anderson waiting
in his room. Though Charlie claims Whip saved a lot of lives with his maneuver, he
tells Whip that there were six deaths, including Katerina and Camila as well as four passengers.
Shortly afterward, Whip is visited by an acquaintance of his,
Harling Mays. Harling brings Whip some cigarettes and some extra things,
and fields Whip's request for some clothing and items from his house. Harling is jovial about
the treatment Whip is receiving, saying Whip should demand better medications. Harling also
tells Whip that his heroics during the crash have called the media out to his home and the hospital.
Looking for a place to smoke one evening, Whip goes into a stairwell, where he encounters Nicole.
They are soon joined by a cancer patient named Mark. The cancer
patient soon realizes who Whip is, and steers the conversation towards God and if disasters
can be prevented or not. In Mark's mind, there's no way to stop things from happening.
To him, he was meant to get cancer, just as much as the three were meant to meet in the stairwell,
and Whip was meant to land that plane. After Mark leaves, Whip tells Nicole that he would
like to see her after they are released from the hospital, and she gives him her address.
Eventually, Whip is released, and Harling sneaks him out a back way
to avoid the press at the front of the hospital. Knowing the media have swarmed his home,
Whip has Harling take him to his father's old farmhouse out in the country, where a
small Cessna resides in a nearby garage. Going through the house, Whip finds all the alcohol
stored around the place, and empties it all out. He also disposes of a small supply of "Mary Jane."
Whip refuses to respond to any of the messages on his phone, but is surprised when Charlie
calls him at the farmhouse, leaving a message to meet him after a medical check-up in a few days.
Whip gives into the request, and sits down with Charlie, and Hugh Lang, a lawyer
from Chicago who has been sent by the pilots union. Hugh explains that at the crash site,
blood was drawn from Whip, indicating he had an elevated blood alcohol level,
and baby powder in his system. The two indicate to Whip that Hugh is going to fight the findings,
but that Whip could face charges of manslaughter, jail time and the loss of his pilot's license.
Whip does not handle the news well, and heads off to a liquor store afterwards.
He then attempts to find Nicole's address, and finds her being kicked
out of her apartment by the landlord. Whip manages to help her pay her rent,
and seeing as she has nowhere to go, and her car won't start, offers to let her stay with him.
Over the next few days, Whip continues to avoid the press, but soon realizes that his reputation
could be plagued by the others who were around him. At Katerina's funeral, he meets Margaret,
who claims she could tell that Whip was drunk when she encountered him that morning. Whip then
starts to get personal, claiming that if not for him, she could have ended up dead as well.
Whip visits Ken at the hospital. Ken explains he hasn't told the National
Transportation Safety Board, who have been investigating the crash,
about his suspicions on Whip's condition at the time. Ken knows what Margaret does,
Whip was hung over in the cockpit and that he may have been drunk when the accident occurred.
Even though he may never walk again, Ken and his wife believe that his surviving was a miracle.
The couple is strictly religious and insist that Whip pray with them, which he does reluctantly.
Meanwhile, Nicole has been turning her life around, getting a job, and attending Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings. She suggests Whip come along with her, but he is unable to stomach much of the
meeting. Shortly afterward, Nicole finds Whip working on the Cessna in his father's garage.
Whip claims that they can fly away and start over, but Nicole refuses his advancements,
and Whip, who has been drinking, angrily yells after her as she leaves.
Eventually, Nicole leaves Whip and he grows even more out-of-control with his drinking.
When the press finally find the farmhouse,
he drives off and ends up in the neighborhood of his ex-wife and son.
Both demand that he leave, but Whip refuses to listen, prompting them to call the police on him.
Charlie and Hugh are incensed at Whip's behavior, claiming that this does not bode well for their
upcoming case with the NTSB. Even though Hugh has managed to have Whip's alcohol test thrown
out on a technicality, they still need to have Whip present his side of the story to Ellen
Block, the investigator for the NTSB. They know that Block is a fair investigator
but will also be tough on the subject of Whip's condition right before the crash.
Whip gives in to their requests to clean up his act, and the evening before the hearing,
he is escorted to a hotel room. A security guard is stationed at the door, and all
traces of alcohol have been cleaned out of the mini-fridge in the room. Whip attempts to relax,
but finds himself unable to sleep or even go over the documents that Hugh has prepared for him.
Later on, he hears a thumping sound. He soon finds it leads to the room adjoining his,
where the door has been left unlocked. In the room he finds a fully-stocked mini-fridge with alcohol.
Whip looks over the contents of the fridge for a short time and even uncaps a bottle of vodka.
He hesitates before downing the bottle, places it on the counter and leaves.
A few moments later, he returns and snatches the bottle.
The next day, Charlie and Hugh show up, but when Whip doesn't answer the door,
they find him passed out in the bathroom with a cut on his head, and empty mini-bottles
littering the room. With the hearing nearly on them, they hatch a bold plan,
they call in Harling Mays, who provides Whip with the cocaine he needs to get himself going.
After paying off Harling, Whip, Charlie, and Hugh head to the hearing.
During the hearing, with Ellen Block presiding it is determined that the cause of the accident
was a damaged jackscrew in the tail-section that had not been repaired a few years prior.
The jackscrew forced the tail stabilizer into down position which caused the dive.
The revelation seems to exonerate Whip, but Ellen then brings up the findings of
two empty mini-liquor bottles in one of the trash cans near the pilot's cabin.
Given the blood-test findings, of which Whip's has been thrown out due to outdated equipment
and procedure in drawing his blood, only one other member of the flight crew could have
potentially stolen the vodka, Katerina, who has a documented history of alcohol and drug abuse.
When asked if he knew about Katerina's history, Whip says he didn't know about it.
When Ellen asks Whip if it's possible that Katerina drank the vodka, he hesitates before
confessing that he drank the vodka. Charlie and Hugh attempt to quell Whip's words, but he
confesses to his alcohol problems, claiming that he is drunk at the moment, and has taken cocaine.
After the hearing, we segue into a small group in a prison, with Whip among the prisoners.
Whip explains to the others about his confession, and that how it seemed
that that moment at the NTSB hearing was his breaking point, he couldn't tell another lie.
13 months later. In his time in prison, Whip is clean and has gained the trust
of his ex-wife and son again. His son soon after comes to visit him,
asking to interview him for a report, to find out more about his father,
whom it seems has been absent through much of his life. A smiling Whip happily agrees.
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