( CNN ) -- Perhaps you have done something like this at some stage in your life : you wake up late for work , hung-over , maybe still a little drunk . You throw on some clothes and report for duty . Maybe you even take a little pride in having gotten your act together so fast ? Hopefully you did n't snort cocaine to clear your head , and hopefully you were n't piloting a commercial airliner either . This is how the morning goes for Captain Whip Whitaker ( Denzel Washington ) , who copes with an angry wake-up call from his ex-wife and then has to face down a storm on takeoff . As the saying goes , it 's all down hill from here . An hour into the flight , the plane goes into a tailspin , and Whip has to use his expertise to execute a death-defying emergency landing . He 's a national hero -- until the blood test results come in . With its spectacular plane crash -- I would rate it fractionally behind the air disasters director Robert Zemeckis staged in `` Cast Away '' and Joe Carnahan in `` The Grey , '' but still more than gut-wrenching enough to make you think about taking the train , next time -- `` Flight '' immediately raises the stakes on your typical addiction drama . But that 's essentially what it is -- with a courtroom finish for extra lift . See , that title refers not just to one doomed trip , but also to Whip 's pattern of evasion . In the aftermath , he steers as far as possible from public scrutiny , avoids even his own defense team , and like all addicts reserves his biggest lies for himself . The first thing he does when he wakes up in hospital is reach out to his supplier for a little extra-medicinal support ( he 's played by John Goodman with much the same gusto he brings to `` Argo '' ) , but Whip refuses his offer of booze and goes on the wagon for a spell . That resolve crumbles when he realizes the kind of trouble he 's in . When he picks up a fellow addict ( Kelly Reilly ) and offers her shelter in the out-of-the-way farm where he grew up , it 's a toss-up whether he 's trying to help or looking for a like-minded screw-up and enabler . The relationship is well-acted without ever quite dispelling the whiff of the screenwriting manual . And that goes for the movie as a whole , which is always expert and sometimes extremely tense , but maybe a bit too on the nose . This is a good movie , but not a great one . Still , Denzel Washington is very fine , packing some extra baggage around the midriff here , his customary swagger speckled with resentment and soulful self-doubt . Whip 's a terrific pilot and a deeply flawed human being -- an atheist who will pray with a surviving crew-member if that 's what it takes to secure a friendly witness for his hearing . It 's not too often we find such questionable characters at the heart of big budget movies like this , and there 's a lived-through-it quality to the movie 's observations on alcoholism that helps `` Flight '' transcend its occasional cliches and even its cop-out sentimental ending . Zemeckis squeezes maximum suspense out of Whip 's wobbly sobriety -- the mini-bar has never looked so sinister -- but even he has trouble disguising the hollow dilemma propping up John Gatins ' story : Is it okay for a pilot to be drunk in charge of an aircraft ? I think we all know the answer to that one .
` ` Flight '' stars Denzel Washington as a flawed airline pilot . # ##izes the spectacular plane chase in film . There 's also a love story between Washington and another troubled character .