Hitchcock: Going psycho for Psycho

First there was Vertigo crowned the greatest film ever made by Sight & Sound this summer. Then came HBO’s The Girl, about the director and his obsession with his Birds star. And now comes Hitchcock, the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Psycho. Welcome to the Alfred Hitchcock Renaissance.

Really, though, when is it not a Hitchcock Renaissance? The great director’s works are frequently discussed, analyzed, taught and served up as an homage in modern-day films. I once took a college psychology course in which we watched Rear Window to diagnose Freudian theories. Several semesters later, it was rolled out for a sociology course to show how voyeuristic observation can lead to scientific discoveries within a species … or something like that. Hitchcock, it seems, spoke a universal language, the language of the cinema.

The British director — with his famous silhouette and that dire jingle named after a funeral march — was riding high in 1959 after the release of North By Northwest. The world had fallen in love with the spy adventure and its hop-scotching around America. Riding that momentum, Hitch — “Call me Hitch, hold the cock,” he tells his friends — has an idea for his next project and it is loosely based on Ed Gein, the mother-obsessed serial killer who was arrested two years earlier for carving up human remains into lamps, belts and bowls. The script is called Psycho. A studio executive balks at the project, as does an early panel of actors and press. “I’ve seen happier faces on a school bus going over a cliff,” Hitch’s agent tells him after the initial project debut.

But Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) fights back and eventually gets the studio to release the film under the condition that he pays for the production. Hitchcock puts his house up as collateral and begins the brave new experiment: to use all his skills as an expert director to make a horror movie, and to do it all on a miniscule budget with his TV-show crew. That’s the setup, but there is so much more to Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock, which skillfully drills a peephole into the faltering psyche of Alfred Hitchcock as he makes what many people thought would be a stinker.

The film is boiling over with conflict: the studio didn’t want to release Psycho, the Production Code wanted to censor the famous shower scene and a single shot of a toilet, Hitch had the flu, he was paranoid that the public would learn the big secret (that the star is killed off a third of the way through the picture), if the film didn’t make money, he would lose his house, the Hollywood press thought Hitch’s days as a top draw were over … on and on and on. Making a movie, it seems, is the art of maneuvering from one problem to another. I love movies about moviemaking and this one is especially fun because Psycho is so well known, and we can see bits of its creation here in between the scenery of the film that frames it.

I would have liked to see more behind-the-scenes moviemaking, including more of the filming of the “shower scene” and more of Anthony Perkins (James D’Arcy) playing troubled momma’s boy Norman Bates. We do get to see lots of Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson), and she’s a terribly good sport even when she has every right not to be, like when Hitch thrashes a butcher knife at her during filming. At one point she gives Hitch a ride home in her Volkswagen and there’s an image for you: a round little man in a round little car. I also loved Toni Collette as Hitch’s lovable assistant, to whom he says one of his great film wisdoms: “Style is just self-plagiarism, my dear.”

Hitchcock is the story of Psycho, but it’s also the story of Alfred and Alma (Helen Mirren), his doting wife. She felt alienated by Hitch during the making of Psycho so she busies herself with other ventures, including a horny author (Danny Huston) who has his eyes on her and every other woman in Hollywood. As great as Mirren is, I found these scenes dull and distracting. They reveal how troubled the Hitchcock marriage was — and how integral Alma was to each of the movies — but they only serve to divert the plot away from Psycho and into some bland character study that is far less interesting. I imagine the real Hitchcock admiring the moviemaking parts, yet growing tired of all the romantic bits on the beach. “Not enough murder,” he might say.

Anthony Hopkins does a commendable job as Alfred Hitchcock. It’s not perfect; occasionally his lips look cold and dead, like the heavy makeup effects on Hopkins’ face had been applied past their sell-by date. Toby Jones, who played Hitch in HBO’s The Girl, looked slightly more convincing, though that movie ignored Hitchcock’s unquestionable impact on the cinema and instead framed him as some kind of pervy uncle who groped at starlets and gave everyone the heebie jeebies. Hopkins, and screenwriter John McLaughlin, don’t ignore Hitch’s various obsessions, but they also don’t ignore his greatness, which makes Hitchcock’s version of the director a more three-dimensional character.

Watching the film, I felt like I was viewing an accurate dissection of the director. It seemed to appreciate Hitch’s craft, his dour personality, his whimsically dark sense of humor and his passion for moviemaking. There’s a terrific scene toward the end with Hitch at the premiere listening through the theater doors for the incoming shower scene. As Norman’s “mother” slashes at Janet Leigh, and Bernard Herrmann’s strings strangulate the audience, Hitch waves his arms madly like a symphony conductor ordering his musicians to impale themselves on their own instruments. The scene has a touch of madness in it, but it’s a wonderfully insightful image into Hitch’s mindset.

I enjoyed this movie, but not more than any of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. If anything, it made me want to have a movie marathon to re-visit his greatness. After all, we are in the Hitchcock Renaissance.

Silver Linings: ‘The best film of the year’

There should be warning signs at theaters screening Silver Linings Playbook: “Welcome to the nerve center of a man’s broken brain.” It wouldn’t deter you, but it would pique your interest and set the mood for the wonderful madness that follows.

The new David O. Russell film might be the first screwball comedy about mental illness, surely the first without Woody Allen. It’s also, hands down, the best film of the year.

I fell in love with Silver Linings Playbook almost two months ago; the studio screened it ridiculously early for the press. I knew it was the best thing I’d seen this year even then, and I hadn’t yet seen Lincoln, Skyfall, Hitchcock and several other award-season movies. Silver Linings just washed over me, drowning me in its quirky overlapping dialogue, note-perfect performances and the beautiful humanity within its sad characters. Walking out of the theater, I felt like I had a winning lottery ticket in my hand but couldn’t tell anyone. This review is me cashing out.

Silver Linings begins with Pat (Bradley Cooper) bouncing around a mental hospital, itching to be free. He checks himself out, though we question that decision because it’s clear he has more healing to do. His mother picks him up and we begin to feel the rhythm of the plot as they trade lines in a complicated staccato of back-and-forth dialogue. The film is driven by Pat’s own brain, his mile-a-minute thought processes pushing the narrative forward on jolts of electricity.

Pat, trying to pick up the pieces of his life, moves in with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver), who seem to treat his mental illness (“undiagnosed bipolar”) with their own mental illnesses — Pat’s father, it seems, has a serious case of obsessive compulsive disorder, also undiagnosed. The father spends much of the day planning the week’s hopes and wagers for Eagles football, to which he’s dedicated much of his life. He’s one of those football fans who watches games dutifully rubbing a superstitious binky. (Don’t know what a “binky” is? Ask a toddler.) The film makes a strong case that maybe we’re all a little mentally unstable, each of us in our own curious ways.

Pat carries a broken soul because he caught his wife in the shower with another man. It sent him into turmoil and unlocked some deep-seated emotional issues. Once out of the mental hospital, all Pat wants to do is re-connect with his wife, which everyone agrees is a dangerous course for Pat’s shaky mental stability. There’s a hilarious bit where Pat decides to read the books his wife, a teacher, would teach in her classes. When he gets to the end of Farewell to Arms, he chucks the book out a window with an expletive and then goes into a 4 a.m. rage that ends with him saying, “On behalf of Ernest Hemingway, I apologize.” His poor parents are dumbstruck.

Eventually, Pat is put in touch with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) because she has her own mental troubles as well: her cop husband was killed and then she was fired from her job for sleeping with everyone. The sex story makes Pat curious, but not for the reasons you'd think. Pat’s best friend thought the two mental cases would make a great couple. What a friend, huh? 

It turns out, the two mental cases do make a great couple, though don’t think of this as a romantic comedy because this film levitates way over that genre. Early in the film Pat and Tiffany share some raisin bran at a diner in what might be the film’s best scene, one that cuts back and forth to each character as they talk, but then lets them share the same frame as they connect and compare medications. The scene is shattered by a Stevie Wonder song, Pat’s emotional trigger because it was playing during the reveal in the shower as well as their wedding. His raisin-bran buddy senses his breakdown and calms it in a way that made me want to weep. I found Tiffany to be a delicate young woman, tough and resilient but just a nudge away from falling down a darker hole than even Pat's abyss. She's much younger than Pat, but her troubles have aged her beyond her years. Lawrence, the Winter's Bone star who's a third of the way through the Hunger Games movies, is one of my favorite new actresses, mostly because she can express a hungry confidence in her subtle performances. Here, her Tiffany is an unmistakable treasure to Silver Linings.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of all that Silver Linings Playbook offers, because I want you to discover much of it yourself. There are bits at an Eagles game, a heartbreaking montage set to Zeppelin’s “What Is and What Should Never Be,” a dance contest not much different from the big finale in Little Miss Sunshine, and lots of running in trash bags. It all zings about in Pat’s neurotic and obsessive state of being, and I was never sure what exactly was going to happen next. By the end, there’s a big conflict and resolution that other films throw together without earning it. This film earns its ending, and everything that happens is a direct result of Pat’s strained healing. I’ve never felt so rewarded by a character’s progress.

Cooper and Lawrence, both show-stoppers and eventual Oscar nominees, are perfect for this film. I can think of better actors, but not in these roles, which are owned from top to bottom by Cooper and Lawrence. They truly inhabit their characters and make them special. There are many other great performances: De Niro and Weaver as the befuddled parents, John Ortiz as the best friend, Shea Whigham (Sheriff Eli on Boardwalk Empire) as Pat’s brother, and Chris Tucker playing a fellow mental patient who repeatedly escapes his facility to lovingly check in on Pat and his progress.

After the marvelous Three Kings, David O. Russell had some career hiccups to get to this point. I mean, have you seen I Heart Huckabees, or have you seen the set videos of his flip-outs? Here, though, he has careful control of his material and guides it through its zany points with pristine control. I find myself deeply interested in his next project.

 I can’t speak highly enough for Silver Linings Playbook. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s neurotic and zany. Mostly, though, it is kind. It takes two people and puts them together to let us watch their collaboration. The camera looks on them with love and appreciation, which in turn frames our perceptions of them as well. I left the theater genuinely happy for them, and excited that a film would make me feel that way.

The Twilight scourge is defeated ... finally

Finally, a movie based entirely on a 14-year-old girl’s telephone conversation with her first boyfriend — “But I love you more.” “I want to be with you forever.” “No, you hang up first.”

The new Twilight film blathers on like this, sustaining the agony for what must surely be 80 percent of the movie. Literally, the first line is, “You’re so beautiful,” and the last one is something like, “No one has ever loved someone as much as I love you.” Yawn, yawn, yawn. I would have preferred the 14-year-old and her phone call; it has better acting.

These groan-worthy endearments —tacky accessories on the train wreck that is Twilight — are said frequently by vampires Bella and Edward, now married, as they contemplate eternity in this fifth and final movie, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2. The thought of eternity with these two pouty, brooding young adults in their gothic-couture wardrobes is simply out of the question. I struggled through 120 minutes, so surely they would lose interest after a month or so, or until the next One Direction album comes out. How long can two people truly just sit and stare at each other? I ask the question but I already know the answer: in Twilight, a lot.

See, staring is the whole plot: Bella Stares at Edward, Edward stares at Bella, Jacob turns up and stares at everyone. Now and again someone says some random personal joke from the Stephenie Meyer books and then the camera does that round-robin thing where all the actors are given a chance to stare off-screen admiring the fact that a joke was told and that a thousand years of vampire-boredom could not rob them of the thrill of staring at a punch line. It happens right at the beginning: werewolf Jacob is in trouble for “imprinting” his wolf paws onto the soul of a vampire baby. Everyone stares at him with that vapid, brain-dead look, even poor Jasper, who looks eternally confused about the presence of his eyeballs. The whole scene ends when Bella shouts hysterically (and hilariously), “You named my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster!?” Cut to a shot of everyone staring. All the Twi-Hards laughed, but all I could hear were crickets.

The real plot — not the staring — involves the half-vampire baby of Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson). The entire conflict is driven by a mix-up: someone saw the baby and thought it was some kind of vampire child. But, oops, no, Bella’s baby — named Renesmee, the worst name ever — is a little angel who ages really fast and has a creepy demonic CGI face that sort of hovers silently over her shoulders because the special effects team didn’t adequately lasso around the face in the computer and now it just looks possessed and terrifying. Using Renesmee as an excuse to launch a war, a secret vampire cult threatens Bella, Edward and the rest of the Cullen coven with annihilation. The secret cult, also big fans of competitive staring, has Dakota Fanning on its team, but gives her nothing to do but grunt at the camera in irritating poses.

I know this film has its many fans, and they’ll have to forgive me, but Twilight really is bad. Like bad bad. It makes soap operas look respectable. Hell, it makes R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet” videos look downright literary. These characters do things that don’t make sense and say things that have no significance to the course of the action. And all the drama is forced and manipulative, especially in a big snowy climax that pulls the rug from under you. It’s as if the movie were play-acting its own importance, but never a story. Each scene seems written for the express purpose of titillating Twilight fans no matter how much the plot or its characters are left dangling over vague plot points (secret passports, Amazon women, super powers) or impossibly stupid dialogue, aka most of the dialogue. And if this is how the books were written, then shame on the studio for not elevating the film above its drudgingly slow source material.

Some of the scenes are simply so bad they must be seen to be believed. I especially enjoyed the opening action bit with vampire-convert Bella running on a treadmill through a CGI forest stalking deer, a special effect worthy of Plan 9 From Outer Space. Later in the scene, Bella claws up a granite wall in a micro-mini so short that the film’s editor (poor Virginia Katz) ought to send Stewart a bill for the pelvic exam. Then there’s the head popping, and lots of it. In a big battle at the end, a number of vampires are killed in a royal rumble with beheadings so bloodless and sterile that pulling the heads off Barbie dolls would be more gruesome. And someone explain to me how big the werewolves are supposed to be — dog-sized or horse-sized — because they changed in every film, and sometimes within each film, this one included.

This fifth Twilight entry is a horrible movie. Admittedly, I’m not the audience for it so go figure on this review. I may not be in Twilight’s core demographic, but I do recognize poorly made movies when I see them. This is one of them. Most everything about it is bad, from the clunky dialogue and the agonizing pacing to the boring character interludes and a plot that is so burdened by the books’ established rules that it’s getting choked to death. Maybe you like the movie, and that’s OK with me, but at least admit to yourself that Twilight is your guilty pleasure.

And if you don’t agree with me now, I’m willing to bet you come around, especially 10 or 20 years from now when, feeling nostalgic, you re-watch all the films and then shamefully think to yourself, “What was I thinking?!?”

Some greatness is self-evident

Abraham Lincoln always seemed beyond or beneath our grasp. His likeness carved in granite at the Lincoln Memorial huge and resolute, but never soft and approachable. His relaxed face on the $5 bill static and flat. His bust on the penny scuffed and common — ask yourself, when was the last time you halted your gait to retrieve a lost penny?

Here in Lincoln, though, the 16th president of the United States is brought to life and into focus. This isn’t just a movie; it’s a portrait of startling clarity, crafted with a lyrical force propelled forward by Daniel Day-Lewis’ flawless performance, one for the ages. He doesn’t just perform Lincoln; Day-Lewis channels him, which will come as no surprise to fans of the actor and his uncanny ability to transform into three-dimensional characters that extend beyond the screen.

Day-Lewis is occasionally trapped in a vortex of some of the Lincoln parody material — the frequent “aw shucks” storytelling, the “Honest Abe” geniality, the uncompromising morals — because, well, that’s how he was and there are numerous documents to prove it. But even those elements are given fresh makeovers as Lincoln’s frantic final months are overwhelmed with political infighting and moral compromises that shook the president to his bones.

Lincoln will educate many viewers. It taught me a thing or two. The one fact that will surprise many is central to the plot: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, his executive order that freed the slaves, was viewed by many as a war-time act that would dissolve as soon as the Civil War ended. At one point the Confederacy was willing to talk of surrender as long as slavery wouldn’t be touched further. Lincoln, though, was willing to prolong the war if it meant slavery would get a permanent death. This could only be accomplished with a constitutional amendment, though Congress was as hotly divided as it is today and change seemed unlikely.

A small army of Lincoln supporters — including Secretary of State William Seward (David Straithairn) and abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) — set about acquiring the necessary votes for what would become the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. They were more than a dozen votes short; each one would be a battle.

Politics, it seems, are politics, even back in Lincoln’s day, so some of the negotiations are a little shady. In particular, Lincoln began promising cushy jobs and titles to lame-duck representatives. He gets one congressman to flip-flop for a postmaster job; another changes course for the ownership of a toll road. Did Lincoln buy votes? The movie makes that case, but it also shows how conflicted Lincoln was about those dirty deeds. He hated them and they tortured him, but he was willing to fight hard to guarantee that slavery ended. At one point, he enlists three thieves and con artists — played wonderfully by James Spader, John Hawkes and Tim Blake Nelson — to go out and procure votes by any means necessary.

These three hucksters add some levity to the bureaucratic drama, especially stand-out Spader, but don’t be confused about what Lincoln is: it is a game of political chess. Aside from three scenes on battlefields — two quiet and contemplative, one violent and raw — much of Lincoln takes place in dimly lit rooms within the White House or in the House chambers, where several key debates and their subsequent votes take place. The movie is full of long passages of uninterrupted dialogue, many spoken by Lincoln, that reveal the conflict and drama that revolved ominously around the end of slavery. And though the movie is long at nearly two and a half hours, it never drags or tires, but instead maintains a careful shuffle ever forward.

The movie was made by Steven Spielberg, and his careful hands can be felt around many of the scenes even when the touch feels heavy and forced, like when a hospital orderly hauls a wheelbarrow full of amputated limbs from a field hospital. It even looked and sounded like a Spielberg movie with Janusz Kaminski’s realistic window-breached lighting and John Williams’ patriotic score. In many ways Lincoln is just as accessible and gimmicky as other Spielberg hits, from Jurassic Park to Jaws; like a giant killer shark or cloned dinosaurs, the film is held up by a single great concept, Abraham Lincoln like you’ve never seen him before. But there is also a complicated side to the film that reverberates more like Schindler’s List or Munich, the director’s more challenging pictures. This movie certainly  acknowledges the “timeless American hero” part of the Lincoln fable, yet it also portrays his various faults and flaws. In the end, of course, Lincoln is quite a heroic figure, but Spielberg fights to get us there with a well-rounded story and a fully realized set of conflicts.

Really, though, the star here is Day-Lewis, who is just completely and utterly convincing as Lincoln. He even looks like Abe, with those sunken cheekbones, large ears and that familiar beard. Much has been made about his voice, and it’s all true: it’s unlike every Lincoln voice you’ve ever heard — gentle, higher pitched, nasally, folksy — nor are likely to hear again. The film frames Lincoln as a great leader, but also a patient husband and a weary father. Scenes with Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his oldest son Robert allow Day-Lewis to show off the range of his Lincoln. He scoops from the president’s darkest days as he patiently guides his wife, who he called Molly, through the pain of losing a son three years earlier, to the struggle with Robert who wanted to fight for the Union, though Abe couldn’t bear the thought of Molly losing another child. There are two curious scenes with both these characters, and both are true: Mary Todd Lincoln was fighting with Congress over vast overspending and her attempts to cover it up, and Robert was at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant ending the Civil War.

Much of the movie is spent just watching Lincoln in all his glory. He often interrupts more important conversations to tell long-winded (but always interesting) stories or analogies that loop back around to a single thought-out premise. Those stories involve whales, lawyers, grain, compasses and arithmetic, and they show Lincoln as a deep thinker, if also a genuine storyteller who admired the attention his title commanded. Slavery troubled him, you can see it on his face. You can hear it in his voice.

We will never know what that really looked or sounded like, but here in Lincoln we get mighty close.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling

We’ve seen James Bond in so many similar scenarios that we tend to marvel when new ones pop up, like they frequently do in Skyfall, Daniel Craig’s third, and possibly best, turn as the British spy yet.

Skyfall is not entirely fresh: several scenes still take place in glitzy casinos, oak-paneled offices and high up in glass skyscrapers where assassins lurk in the shadows with high-powered rifles. I guess Bond can’t stray too far from the franchise formula, although he does try so hard here in Bond 23.

It begins like all the other Bond movies, with an action-packed pre-title sequence (before an excellent title song by Adele). Sometimes these sequences have nothing to do with the rest of the plot, but this one does. Bond and an agent we’ll call by her first name, Eve (Naomie Harris), are chasing a spy assassin as he shuttles precious cargo back to its buyer. The cargo is a detailed database of spy information — a pack of spy trading cards, if you will — a story device that appears frequently in modern espionage thrillers. If the database is stolen, and then hacked into, it could reveal the names and locations of every deep-cover operative in the British spy service. Bond bolts after the assassin in a chase sequence that moves from car to motorcycle to train, but never to a Segway, a joke beneath Craig but not Roger Moore — I miss those gags.

We come to learn that the mystery assassin isn’t the real villain, but a sub-contracted employee of Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former British spy who has some issues with forgiveness. Silva was disavowed by his bosses, common practice in espionage, and now he’s taking it out on Bond, his boss M (Judi Dench) and on MI6, the British spy agency. Bardem’s Silva is terrifying, if only because Bardem himself is terrifying — his speech patterns, those cold eyes, and his towering physical presence will give you the willies. In his introduction to the film, Silva shares an analogy about coconuts and rats that might give you nightmares. In the same scene, Silva admits he’s gay, and then uncomfortably gropes at Bond in what might be a first for the franchise. You’ve heard of Bond Girls; maybe Bardem is the first Bond Guy.

Skyfall is mostly about Silva’s intricate revenge plots against M, and involves sequences on an abandoned island in China, a casino brawl ended by giant lizards, a subway derailing and a shoot-out in a government building. This is all typical Bond material. But then the movie does something strange: it stops being a James Bond movie. Of course, James Bond is still in it, but he’s doing things we’ve never seen him do before, like getting in a car and driving away from all the mayhem. Bond has always been an offensive player, but here we see his defensive side as he packs up and leaves London with M by his side. Where he drives, and what he drives, I will let you discover, but let me tease it by saying it involves Bond’s past, which has always been a taboo subject in other Bond films.

The last part of the film is the defensive siege in an old country house. There are few gadgets, few martinis and even fewer witty one-liners. Where the first half of the movie feels like anything from Bond 1-22, the second half feels more like Straw Dogs, with James Bond as the protective homeowner defending his property from murderous invaders. I greatly enjoyed this part of the movie. It’s unlike any other Bond movie in the whole franchise. And for once we learn something deeper and more meaningful about the super-spy.

Craig here is muted, but fantastic. I would have liked more energy in his role; he plays the whole thing kinda hushed and quiet. I did like a sequence in the first half of Skyfall where Bond has to update all his physical training, including an unfortunate day at the shooting range. Harris as Eve is also a lot of fun. Bond and Eve share a moment that cuts away so fast that I can’t decide if they had sex or not. For once, it’s a mystery. Dench is lovely, as always. She’s contrasted here by a new addition, Ralph Fiennes, who could easily be a Bond himself.

There are many new ideas to behold in Skyfall, many of them I can’t discuss here in fear of spoiling some surprises. Director Sam Mendes should be commended for introducing these fresh elements to the franchise. This is still the grittier, edgier Bond of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace — in the same vein as the Timothy Dalton Bonds, The Living Daylights and License to Kill — but Skyfall also introduces another level to the franchise that I wasn’t expecting. It shows us humility and reverence.

Now, all that being said, James Bond, despite all his frantic dashing from cartoony cliché to gritty action-drama, still can’t escape from some of the trappings of the genre. This is especially evident in that opening pre-title sequence, where Bond drives a motorcycle through a crowded Turkish market and at one point takes cover behind a fruit cart as guavas and mangos explode above him. This is the material of Bond parodies and all that’s missing are two workmen carrying a pane of glass across a roadway.

In some ways, Skyfall is the best of both worlds: an old-school James Bond picture and also a dramatic re-examination of the spy and all his powers.

Come fly with me / Come fly / Come fly away

In case you didn’t know alcoholism was a destructive disease, here, let me crash a plane to prove a point. It’s like curing cancer by lighting a hospital on fire — complete and total overkill, not to mention pointless.

What’s tremendously frustrating about Flight is the high-volume of stellar performances within it. Consider Denzel Washington, destructive and sympathetic as the seasoned drunk ravaged by lies, cover-ups and self-deception. He lets alcohol bring him down, and then cocaine bring him back up. Oddly enough, it’s a symbiotic balance. He’s joined by big stars (John Goodman, Don Cheadle) and small ones (Kelly Reilly) as he fights to convince himself he has no problem, even as a crashed plane sits in a field smoldering.

Washington is Whip Whitaker — fantastic comic-book name! — a veteran airline pilot who functions better drunk and high than he does clean and sober. He gets on a plane and immediately raids the beverage cart for those tiny little single-serving bottles. He could blow three times the legal limit, but Whip holds it together even as his plane with 102 souls on board begins to break apart. This sequence is absolutely terrifying, unrivaled by anything before it, including that horrible plane crash from Knowing or that excruciating airborne torture in United 93. It’s made more thrilling by what seems like real aviation theory: to save a plane from a steep nose-diving descent, Whip inverts the plane until he can trim his speed and find a suitable field for a crash landing. Such maneuvers might not be possible in a commercial jet, but Flight makes it feel believable.

Officials are blunt about Whip’s abilities: not a single pilot in a flight simulator could replicate the life-saving outcome of his unorthodox maneuver. “You saved a lot of lives today,” a transportation official tells him. Whip finds out later they tested his blood after he was knocked unconscious in the crash. Of course, they’re going to find alcohol and traces of marijuana and cocaine. Should he panic, or just play it cool? He dodges the media and other questions by hiding out at his father’s property, where he wages an inner battle with himself to quit alcohol cold turkey. On an upswing, Whip empties all the bottles and cans into the sink, but a liquor store down the way tempts him further.

Washington as a miserable and volatile drunk is a fascinating performance, far removed from even his excellent dirty-cop role from his Oscar-winning turn in Training Day. He has this uncanny ability to generate immense sympathy for his characters during their perpetual implosions. A sweet old lady sitting next to me in my screening kept whispering “don’t do it” as Whip reached for vodka bottles, 24-packs of beer and a candy-like display of color inside a hotel mini-bar. Washington is a likeable guy, and to see his character struggle is one of the reasons why he was cast in this role — because we want him to succeed and it hurts to see him fail. He’s joined in many scenes by Kelly Reilly, who plays an addict who has already hit bottom, compared to Whip who is still on the downward spiral. I liked their interactions together; they’re the same characters at different points in their trajectories.

Where Flight struggles is with its many themes, which are so muddled that I failed to grasp the film’s true intention. Several times it invokes God as part of the plot: the plane crashes into a church, an evangelical church group rescues some of the passengers, the co-pilot and his wife are devout believers who believe God guided the plane to the ground and at one point Whip asks, “Whose God would do this?” In an earlier scene, in a lengthy monologue, a cancer patient questions why God would give him such a horrible disease. These scenes, exploratory in nature, seem disjointed and dangle off the rest of the plot. I kept waiting for them to link up with the spiritual aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, but they never did.

By the end of the film, religion and God really have nothing to do with anything. All the divine clues from the beginning of the picture were woeful attempts at misdirection. Really, all Flight is about is how far a person would go to hide their alcoholism. Smashed, a smaller, more intimate movie about the exact same thing, went much further and in much more interesting ways. And it didn’t need to crash a jet to do it. (Go see it, it’s still in theaters.)

I wanted the film to focus more on this idea of frauds, which it only vaguely hints at. Whip is an American hero after he guides the plane to the ground, but he hides a devastating secret — that he was drunk and high during the crash. At any moment the incriminating facade could crash down and reveal who he really is. It could be the story of author James Frey, or accused dopers Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong. That premise of stolen heroics is more interesting than anything else suggested in Flight — other than the performances — though it’s the most downplayed themes.

The movie is directed by Robert Zemeckis, who’s been wandering Uncanny Valley for the last 12 years doing questionable motion-capture pictures. His action is stunning and utterly convincing, but everything else wanders with little direction. At one point he films a scene on the set of a porn movie, with nude actors in the foreground and background, though the scene serves no purpose. Other times, he just resorts to trite moralizing and cliché, like during a drug scene when Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” is playing on the soundtrack. Really?! Were the rights to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” not available? Zemeckis’ perception on R-rated drama — his last 13 films have been PG-13 or milder — is just a little askew and much of it feels like pandering to adults who know better.

Flight is marvelously acted, and those airplane sequences look incredible, but all its big pieces don’t line up in any coherent fashion. It’s as if the cabin, fuselage and tail were made from three different kinds of planes. It’ll fly, but it’s not very aerodynamic.