19 January 2012. Not since Closer (2004) has a movie presented the dynamics of human relationships. With Life in Flight, it is both more simple and less intensely dramatic and polished, yet at the same time it is more subtle and in some ways more authentic in its depiction and resonating of real life though it comes off with less energy and compelling appeal. It's depiction and presentation style is more in line with Lars and the Real Girl (2007) though addressing different familial subject matter. In some ways there's a bit of the self-reflective element of Anne Hathaway's character as found in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and the existential dilemma as found in Sliding Doors (1998) which in that movie's case was even more imaginatively done as more captivating. Nor does Life in Flight have the sharpness and singular dramatic crisp bite of American Beauty (2000) nor Shopgirl (2005). Nevertheless, Life in Flight has a substantive quality pertinent to contemporary life and provokes valuable reflection on living in today's world.

I once read a comment from Jim Shooter, the former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, that it was okay to tell a "day in the life" story as long as it was about the day you discovered penicillin or saved the world from an alien invasion. There's some truth to that. Heaven knows a lot of storytellers love to wallow in the mundane, keeping it real or getting all meta or something. Every so often, though, it's nice to experience a film that isn't about people getting killed or boy getting plot-hammered together with girl while a joke goes off every 20 seconds. At less than 80 minutes long, Life in Flight manages to satisfy that craving without overstaying its welcome.

Will Sargent (Patrick Wilson) is a New York City architect with a constantly aggravating construction project on one hand and a constantly striving wife (Amy Smart) on the other. Will is on track to merge his company with a larger, ritzier firm. His wife is happy about that. Will…not so much. He has mostly consigned himself to it, until he meets Kate (Lynn Collins). She's a designer herself and the two of them click from almost the first words they speak to each other. While Will and his wife are living in different emotional hemispheres, it's like he and Kate are next door neighbors. Kate thinks there's something going on between them while Will tries not to admit that to himself. Then she finds out he's married and the day comes when he has to sign the merger papers and both of them are forced to stop living their lives the way other people want them to.

Patrick Wilson and Lynn Collins are both elegantly normal. Yes, the drama of their characters isn't like they're living in a war zone or trying to escape from a horde of zombies, but they let us see it's as important to Will and Kate as all our dramas are to us. Nobody else except Amy Smart really has more than an extended cameo in the movie, so the whole shebang rests of Wilson and Collins making us care about Will and Kate. They succeed by diving into the somewhat shallow waters of two people who are unhappy without having much cause to be and making the viewer feel the commonplace depth of his or her own life.

Now, I wouldn't say everything works here. Kate invests a whole lot of emotion into a guy she barely flirts with. You also can't escape the realization at the end of Life in Flight that you've watched the world's most sympathetic view of a guy going through a midlife crisis where the film ends just as he's about to start cheating on his wife. I'm not sure if it was intentional but it made me stop and reevaluate how I felt about the whole thing. And while Amy Smart plays a bitch whose bitchiness is beautifully calibrated to a inch before something Will would feel entitled to object to, the two of them are so out of sync it's hard to believe they would have ever had a second date, let alone got married and had a child.

If you're looking for a distraction, this probably isn't it. It you'd like a mirror to help you see your own life a bit more clearly, take a look at Life in Flight.

Great movie despite the mediocre cast. Inspiring, shows that life is more than the chase for a dollar and selling out in order to feel like you can become someone. The movie is about staying true to nature of being human. I thought it was great because it inspires the search for something real not materialistic but soulful in the concrete jungle where the human connection has been displaced by sensual pleasures and the endless chase for the next big thing and happiness thats never found. The movie inspires stepping back and evaluating life's values, slowing down, smelling the roses and hearing the long lost voice of the yearning soul within self as well as someone else. I recommend this movie to everyone.