For the first time in a while, myself and my partner (for I am a cowboy) chose to see something we hadn't heard any reviews or recommendations of. We had seen the trailer a lot, first a handful of times about eight months ago and then a handful of times more recently. I'm not sure whether the original intention was to release the film a while back and then it got delayed, or whether we're small children who are just supposed to get really, really excited about films with planes in them, but nevertheless there does seem to have been a fair bit of pushing of this film, which from what I can recall from the multiple adverts is called Drunkplane.
Drunkplane stars Denzel Washington as 'Whip' Whittaker, a confident, sharp and talented pilot, whose charming exterior belies a dark relationship with alcohol, drugs and stupid unexplained nicknames. In the face of a sudden and disastrous technical failure which, in the hands of any other pilot, would result in the deaths of everyone on the flight, 'The Whipster' saves the day with audacious yet brilliant tactics (which involve being upside-down and lots of screaming from the co-pilot). He is lauded as a hero, until an investigation reveals he had alcohol and cocaine in his system at the time. Though his lawyer (Don Cheadle, who I can't help but adore since his bizarre turn in Ocean's Eleven) manages to suppress the result of his drugs test, 'Mr. Whippy' must now come to terms with managing his addiction, in light of both his new fame and the investigation which could put him in prison.
Though I enjoyed Drunkplane a lot, I was also a little bit frustrated by it. Like a cat that would rather play with a cardboard box than the toy it contains, it ignored the more interesting elements of its story in favour of the blander bits. The first twenty minutes depicting the crash are brilliant: entirely inaccurate according to any pilots who have seen it, but absolutely nail-chewing and buttock-clenching. This was followed by a vaguely interesting dialogue between hospital patients about death, which led me to believe that Drunkplane might try and venture into intriguing territory. Sadly it all got pretty standard afterwards. A few themes were touched upon - the nature of religious faith in the face of calamity, questions of morality and what makes a 'hero', the pressures of fame - but they were never properly addressed. Instead we got a cardboard cut-out relationship subplot, which seemed to serve no purpose except "we should have a woman in this film because boobs", and a rushed ending which took all the interesting and ambiguous bits from the film and threw them into a big big fire. There was a moment not too far from the end where the film seemed to say "to be honest booze and drugs are fucking ace and you should do them, because they fix everything". That, to me, would have been a far better ending - maybe not correct, but confrontational and surprising. The audience's reaction would have been to think "blimey, I wonder what that was all about. Maybe I should ask myself some questions about deontological dogma and the true nature of ethics". That would have been good. Unfortunately that seems to be too much to expect from Hollywood, because the film was of course wrong-footing us, and swiftly decided to steer back onto the straight and (inevitably) the narrow. Nonetheless I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a good time, but at a time like this when so many Oscar contenders are out in cinemas vying for your attention, I'd say you could make better use of your £8.40 (jesus) elsewhere.
Verdict: da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-DRUNKPLANE!
Don Cheadle isn't finding me funny. That's okay, I entertain myself.
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