Flight

Whip Whitaker had an epic layover in Orlando -- an all-nighter with a sexy flight attendant and much imbibing. A little sniff-sniff bump the next morning? It just gets the day going.

He puts on his uniform and shows up for work. He's an airline pilot. Maybe a couple of bottles of the plane's mini-vodkas to take the edge off the edge? Why not?

He dozes off in the cockpit, brushes off the "You feeling OK, Captain?" questions from the co-pilot. He's an accident waiting to happen.

But when it does, nobody is cooler under pressure than Whip, given an aged, icy competence by Denzel Washington. He gets a doomed jetliner on the ground near Whip's hometown of Atlanta with minimal loss of life. He's a hero, right? Except for all that earlier stuff.

Flight is a terrific thriller about that crash -- detailed to the nth degree -- and a moving drama about "that earlier stuff." Because what do you do with a case like this, a self-destructive alcoholic whose condition may have contributed to a tragedy, or mostly