Fasten your seatbelts! Denzel’s latest vehicle - 'Flight' - is landing in cinemas across the UK. In the thriller, Denzel Washington stars as the skilled yet somewhat troubled airline pilot Captain Whip Whitaker.
It should be an ordinary day for the crew
of SouthJet Airlines. But after a particularly heavy night drinking,
Captain Whitaker boldly shows up to fly a planeload of passengers. It’s a
routine journey, but things don’t run smoothly. There is severe
turbulence and the plane ends up in the middle of a storm. There are
also mechanical problems, causing the plane to spiral out of control.
Whip has to act fast. He has to try to land
the plane safely. Desperately, he crash-lands in a field. Although the
impact is shattering, he manages to save all but six of the 102 people
on board. Whip wakes up in hospital to find he has been hailed a hero
for the miracle landing.
The media go crazy, wondering how he
managed to land the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board have
their suspicions. They ask what actually happened to the plane. What,
or who, was responsible for the plane’s problems? An investigation
follows. Whip is in the hot seat. He is convinced that all the
passengers on the plane would have died if he hadn’t been in the
cockpit. He is convinced that his addictive lifestyle played no part in
the crash. Old friend and union representative Charlie Anderson (John
Goodman) and lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) fight to clear Whip’s name.
To escape the media frenzy, Whip takes
refuge at his late father’s farm. He invites recovering drug addict
Nicole - a woman he met in the hospital - to come and stay with him.
Their friendship blossoms into romance, which could be exactly what Whip
needs to straighten out his life. But he refuses to accept help or
change. As crash investigators dig deeper, Whip takes a good look at
himself. He questions the life he seemed to have got away with living.
Will he allow his lies to get him off the hook this time?
No matter the scale, many of us have
personal issues that we’d rather not deal with. We hide them by spending
money, working extra hard at our jobs or simply putting a smile on our
faces. Sometimes we may even cheat and lie. But using cover-ups isn’t
the way out. People try to deceive others, themselves and even God.
They tell themselves that they are OK when they are not. But there is
only one way out of such deception - the truth.
‘The truth,’ says Jesus, ‘will set you free’ (John 8:32 New International Version).
We don’t have to be bogged down by our
lies. We can accept Jesus’ forgiveness for our wrongdoing. We can be
healed by his love and set free by the truth of his teachings. He is
always willing to accept us exactly as we are. When we welcome Jesus
aboard our lives, we can rest assured that he will pilot us safely
through whatever we have to face.
UK & Ireland - Feb 2013 War Cry
Photo credit: Paramount Pictures
