Flight soars, then sputters - but Denzel is awesome

"Flight" is pretty exciting right from takeoff, and in some ways the best part of the movie is the first "act" of about 30 minutes, the airplane losing control and the pilot, Denzel Washington, bringing it safely to ground in a field with a lot of injuries but with few lost lives - terrifically tense moments in the cockpit and he calmly figures out how to control the plane while his co-pilot more or less freaks. It would be hard to pick the movie up from there, but the rest of this very long movie is admirable if not terribly original - a good if familiar story, along fairly predictable lines, of Denzel's addiction (mostly alcohol, but also cocaine), his cover-up, and his eventual recovery, inspired by a recovering drug addict whom he meets and, sort of, falls in love with and, ultimately, by his own moral code: the NTSB investigation at the end, when Denzel is faced with a Hobson's choice of whether to besmirch the posthumous reputation of one of the victims of the crash or to confess his own complicity, is a powerful moment and an important turning point - but very late in the film. What mostly makes the film is Denzel - in a terrific performance that covers a vast range of emotions and behaviors and should win him a Best Actor Oscar I would think (though I don't know what else is out there). I do wonder how on earth or why on earth the producer was cleared to show Denzel drinking a Budweiser while driving.