Or not.
Even knowing Denzil Washington plays a pilot who saves a planeful of lives only for it to transpire that he may have had a drinkie or two the night before, nothing prepared me for just how tense and gripping a film this was going to be. Nothing.
I'm still in a slight state of shock now.
It all starts off innocently enough - Denzil's Whip Whittaker is naked, rowing with his ex-wife on the phone, doing a couple of lines to help wake up... All the stuff you'd be happy your pilot doing before he flew you on a short hop across a couple of States.
Meanwhile, in another part of the country, Kelly Reilly's hapless character Nicole is doing her best to clean up her act by shooting up a quick overdose of heroin.
And STILL nothing prepares you for what happens next.
You know there's a crash. The trailer shows you the crash crashing. All the film blurb mentions the crash. There's definitely a plane crash.
And this is a Zemeckis film. OK, there was a plane crash in Cast Away, but he's Zemeckis - there's no way this is going to be a tough... WOAH!
As soon as things start going wrong, you're transfixed, mesmerised. You're holding your breath, your holding your seat, you're probably holding the hand of the person next to you.
The plane is spinning, people are screaming, stowed luggage is unstowed, buckled passengers become unbuckled, breath is still being held.
And then Whip gets it on the ground.
And you can breathe again.
Only you can't. Because no longer has Zemeckis allowed you to relax, he starts turning the screw again as we watch Whip's life unravel as the truth starts to emerge. And this is where Denzil really shines.
In lesser hands, it would be hard to care for a man whose arrogance and denial are pretty much his only personality traits - but Denzil captures perfectly a man falling apart, forcing a surprising amount of sympathy from the audience (without giving anything away, there is a moment where you will almost want to stand and applaud).
But this isn't purely the Denzil show (although he more than deserves his Oscar nod).
Ms Reilly is wonderful as Whip's fallen angel who fell a bit too hard, John Goodman seems to be channelling his inner Dude - bringing brief light relief with a sinister undertone as Whip's 'friend' - and Don Cheadle is at his cool, aloof best as the lawyer who'll do what is needed to save the arse that's paying him.
That's not to say Flight is a flawless piece of work - it's not. God seems to be heavily invoked with no real sense of purpose or conclusion, it could have been a tad shorter, and the final scenes seem almost to deliberately add the schmaltz for the Oscar judges - but you find yourself forgiving all this as your emotions soar and plummet with Whip's turmoil-fuelled life.
I can't be sure I'll be getting on a plane anytime soon, but I know I'll be drawn back to watch Flight again.
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