Movie reviews: Flight
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Whip is hailed as a hero — almost everyone on board the flight survives, due to Whip’s near-miraculous manoeuvres — but the audience is already aware that Whip was sleep-deprived, drunk and high on cocaine when he sat into the pilot’s seat.
Mechanical failure is blamed for the plane coming apart in mid-air, but to what extent is Whip complicit in the death of the four people who were killed? This question forms the moral context for Whip’s subsequent battle to overcome his addictions and take responsibility for his failures in life. However, fans of the traditional Hollywood happy-ever-after should be warned that Robert Zemeckis’s film is more interested in posing tough questions than it is in providing pat answers. Whip Whitaker is a charismatic character but he is by no means a conventionally likeable hero. A strong cast led by Don Cheadle and Bruce Greenwood provide expert support, but this gripping tale is shouldered by an Oscar-worthy performance from Washington as he creates a deliciously flawed character who generates as much revulsion as he does sympathy.
Hitman Jason Bonomo (Sylvester Stallone) and cop Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang) team up to avenge their respective partners, both murdered by the same criminal gang, in Bullet to the Head (16s), which is directed by veteran helmer Walter Hill (Southern Comfort, 48 Hours). Adapted from a graphic novel, the movie won’t be celebrated for its subtlety — the body count is akin to that of Saving Private Ryan — but that was presumably the idea: an old-fashioned buddy-buddy actioner designed to showcase the fact that both Stallone and Hill still have what it takes to kick ass, on the screen and at the box office. Unfortunately, Stallone looks and sounds like a bear emerging from hibernation: he appears lean and mean, but his muscle-bound stiffness is such that even the editing suite’s magical properties can’t persuade us that he is the fluid action man of yore. The buddy-buddy aspect of the story lacks any chemistry, given that Bonomo’s contribution to the relationship is for the most part characterised by casual racism. Meanwhile, Sung Kang has little to do other than sit around and look bemused as Stallone’s character — the kind of self-deluding killer who believes himself some kind of noble hero because he doesn’t murder children and women too — ties himself into knots as he attempts to prove he’s one of the good guys. All told, Bullet to the Head is notable only for the fact that it is the first film in decades to use the word ‘henchmen’ in a non-ironic way.
The Belgian film Bullhead (16s), directed by Michaël R Roskam, is a much more intriguing take on masculinity and violence. A vicious childhood assault has left Jacky (Matthias Schoenaerts) dependent on artificial, and illegal, testosterone shots in order to develop as a man. Now Jacky, a farmer, finds himself dragged into the lethal world of Belgium’s ‘hormone Mafia’. A superb central performance from the bulked-up, quasi-taurine Schoenaerts — who recently starred in the excellent Rust and Bone (2012) — powers a compelling tale with strong echoes of classical tragedy and mythology as Jacky struggles to escape the labyrinth fate has constructed around him.
Set in the 1930s, Hyde Park on the Hudson (12A) explores the affair between Franklin Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and his distant cousin Daisy (Laura Linney), which takes place under the nose of FDR’s wife, Eleanor (Olivia Williams), and plays out over the weekend when the King and Queen of England (Samuel West and Olivia Colman) arrived to stay at FDR’s country estate. Directed by Roger Michell, it’s all very genteel and quite nicely played, but the cast as a whole turns in a collectively understated performance, which means it all lacks the kind of vim and vigour we might expect from some of the most powerful people on the planet.
Flight ****
Bullet to the Head **
Bullhead ****
Hyde Park on the Hudson ***
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