𒁏 ♛is the sort of ‘adult’ movie Hollywood loves to make.

An alcoholic🌟 pilot is proclaimed 🍷a hero before spiralling out of control; it’s an arc more solid than the Forth Bridge.

Couple that with a spellbinding set-piece, a towering central performance and a return to fertile ground for a director who has been off on his own flight of fancy,🔥 and all the ingredients are in place for one of the more sophisticated studio offerings of late.

Denzel Washington soars as Captain Whip Whitaker, a commercial airline pilot about to take control of a 9am flight to Atl📖anta. “I’m feeling a little light-headed,” he says. “I should’ve ate something.”

Or maybe not done that line of c⛎ocaine in his hotel room and downed those two miniatures on board...

But, amid terrible weather cond✱itions, when a mechanical failure occurs, Whitaker pulls off a miracle crash-landing – one that sees him hailed as a saviour by the TV news crews.

After a trio of underwhelming mo-cap adventures ( , and ), direct♓or Robert Zemeckis shows us exactly what special effects should be used for – with a plane crash s𓆉o visceral you’ll be reaching for the sick bag.

But that’s just the beginning of🃏 John Gatins’ script.

A routine blood-test shows up Whitaker’s use of drugs and alcohol, whic🐈h means – despite his life-saving antics – he faces jail-time.

Showcasing an intriguing moral quandary, Flight is really a character study in addiction – witness Kelly Reilly’s heroin-iꦯnjecting masseuse, who Whiﷺtaker meets in hospital.

Washington never misses a beat as he unravels from cocky self-assurance to reveal an inner monster raging with self-pi🗹ty and loathi🅷ng.

It’s not entirely turbulence-fre🦂e – Whitaker&r🦹squo;s coke-supplying buddy (John Goodman) is ill-fitting and the final act about-turn is a little too, well, Hollywood.

But for the most part, ably steered by an on-form Zemeckis, Flight is well worth boarding.