Fight is a very interesting if not a great film.  It has a first class director, lead actor and cast provide for its high quality.

There are however some points I feel the need to emphasize about the film.

First a little background from Wikipedia:

“The film stars Denzel Washington as Whip Whitaker, an airline pilot who miraculously crash lands his plane after it suffers an in-flight mechanical failure, saving nearly everyone on board. Immediately following the crash, he’s hailed a hero, but an investigation soon leads to questions that puts the captain in a different light.”

First, though tragic his reasons may be, it is highly unlike that an alcoholic pilot would be  allowed to fly due to the psychometric monitoring pilots have to undergo: see, for instance, www.odt.co.nz March 28, 2014.

SO WHO IS REALLY RESPONSIBLE?
The film fictionally puts lots of pressure on the airline commander, last but not least the total indifference of the airline owner for it.  So, who is really responsible for any – actual or potential – aircraft accident. Cost-reducing poor maintenance – hardware, software and personnel – is the most frequent cause of aircraft accidents, killing hundreds of people, if not more.

The airline captain has certainly no excuse for his abuses – alcohol, drugs, and sex.   The title Flight also has a double meaning together with “lying” meaning escaping from reality.  The film does not clarify where the circle starts from.  Are the captain’s abuses causes or effects of his need to escape reality?

There’s one more character who adds to the metaphors of this film, the drug dealer who helps the commander to sober up, and whose appearances have the Rolling Stone’s song Sympathy for the Devil as a background soundtrack.

MOVIE AS INTER-CONNECTED RISKS
The film in itself can be summarized as a system of inter-connected risks that undergo mainly superficial analysis and treatment.

The causes of problems are not clearly investigated, nor identified.  The corrective / preventive approaches (CAPA) implemented are – to the film viewer – doomed inevitably to fail.

Watching the movie in the right light could be a good example of a lesson to be learned when delivering risk coaching lessons or courses.

Though tragic the effects of addictions are, we must not forget that words such as “workaholic” are created to identify both affected people and the addiction’s effects.

As Montesquieu wrote: “a rigorous diet to maintain one’s health is like a boring illness.”  We shall not make of flexibility “a rigorous diet too”, to prevent or avoid the adverse effects of applying strict rules.  Corrections can often be more adverse than the effects they are intended to fight as well as prevention.

The key to all these questions and doubts seems to be “balance”, which is probably one of the hardest concepts in human awareness, knowledge and – therefore – culture.

Let’s take our “flight” commander, for an instance: he was repeatedly told and repeatedly told himself to “drink responsibly.”  Why not drive, eat, work, live social and family life “responsibly”, then?

To the extent balance is close to responsibility, some major issues have to be reviewed.   Would you imagine ISO writing in their Standards a clause for “organization and balance” requirements?

And balance would also be the critical word putting together authority and responsibility.   One has the power and one has accountability .

In the trial sequence, a disquieting question arises: ‘who judges and are they qualified to judge?’  Does the person have a reasonable, shareable, or shared right for the action?

The film moves towards sympathy for the culprit.  Auditors and their principals have to be carefully aware of this frequently possible bias.  Auditees are often “judged” or sentenced well before they’re listened to and their motivations known and understood.

It’s not so difficult to see how an entertaining film contains messages that attentively analyzed can lead to better comprehension and further learning.

If there’s an one-before-all risk, it is awareness like the old Zen scholar who said “I want to be aware of every step I make”. It may remind the The Police’s song “Every Breath You Take” that has a meaning of awareness control.

Escaping means controlling Reality the other way round, voluntarily ignoring it instead of accepting it and dealing with it.  Many CAPA’s work on the former approach ending obviously nowhere.

The risks are what they are.  Therefore, the most severe ones being those of spending much resources for nothing or just a little more than it.

Even aphorisms’ writers it’s said that – when closely reading them – one comes to the conclusion that such writers seem to know very well one another.