Finally saw this the other night.  Boy was I ever both surprised and not surprised at the same time...well...not at the same time, but at different times.

I'll echo what of other peeps said here - Denzell is a force of nature.  What an incredible actor.  Easily one of my all time faves and he delivers here in a very ugly role that is actually hard to watch at times.

My surprise started immediately, as I didn't even realize this was a R rated movie.  In reality, it's a hard R rated movie.  I was watching with a female friend of mine and I said within 15 seconds, "This is the way all movies should begin!".  Wow, what a complete and total babe, Nadine Velasquez is.  Unreal.  My female friend didn't say a word and was obviously uncomfortable watching.

My next moment of surprise came very soon after Nadine was prancing around buttass naked, when they both start smoking a doob and Denzell snorts up a fattie.

The level of drug and alcohol abuse on display here is over the top, IMO.  I mean, downright hard to watch, sad and disturbing.

My next surprise came in the amazingly well done crash scene, as well as the very well done flight scenes leading up to the malfunction.  Again, as others said, edge of my seat stuff going on.  Excellent!

But things quickly die down and we're stuck with a very different movie than what I thought we'd get...or wait...actually, I wasn't surprised, because I feared this would be slow, which is why I waited so long to see it.  Sure, it's a character study with a number of messages, and it's all well done, but for me, too much of the same thing and too much of a number of things that should probably never have made the final cut.

OK, back to some surprises.  I was more than surprised with John Gatins' script than anything else.  Maybe shocked is the the better word.  This thing was filled with more cliches than I can recall seeing recently.  I mean, if you think about it, just about everything and everyone was one giant cliche.  But, to make matters worse (for me) they were all so over the top, it almost felt like Gatins was trying to push as many buttons as he possibly could to shock, sadden, sicken, or anger his audience.

Every character is so troubled and "broken".  Even the "good guys" are far from what I'd call good peeps.  Everything is handled in a very dark way.  For me, it was a struggle to stay with it...but I did.

I didn't appreciate Kelly Reilly's Nicole at all.  I didn't buy a single scene she was in, and she was in a bunch.  I'm not saying she did a poor job, but the inclusion of her character was so unbelievable, it detracted from the power the scenes were supposed to showcase.  And then, just like that, she's gone, and we don't see her again.

So, then Whip starts getting his shit together and it's hard not to believe this will end up with a typical Hollywood ending and everyone lives happily ever after.  Well...wait a minute, now.  Actually, I was pretty sure he would fuck everything up, just based on all the over the top cliches and the like and when the room next to him is conveniently not locked and loaded with a weekend's worth of alcohol, I shook my head and said, "Oh come on now...".

The following scenes with John Goodman didn't work at all for me.  It was handled in such an odd humorous way, that again, it just screamed things aren't going to work out, damnit!

The "trial" scene finale is both awesome, irritating, and downright sad.  I didn't see it coming that Whip would give up his own life to protect the image of his dead babe party girl.  It was both powerful and upsetting, because I did want him to change and get his shit together.  I can easily see peeps loving it and hating it at the same time.

The very last scene with his son was so obviously tacked on that it felt a little embarrassing to me.  No reason to go there, but the powers that be wanted to end on some sort of high, positive note, and I guess I have to say they succeeded.

If you really look deeply at this script, you'll see it's nothing new at all.  It's ripe with cliches in all forms and of all guises.  It's over the top in every way imaginable.  It's by the numbers writing, dressed up to look like it's outside the box.

But hey, it's got Denzell in a role that is hard to forget, and it pulls absolutely no punches and has to be just about as unmainstream as a mainstream movie can be.  And for that, I salute it.

Not for everyone, but a great flick to study and analyze as a writer.