The pilot turned his airliner upside down. On purpose. And it saved nearly a hundred lives.

That's the idea behind one of the most intense movie moments of the holiday season: the core scene of "Flight," starring Denzel Washington as pilot Whip Whitaker. Hollywood sure likes Washington's performance. The role earned him an Oscar nomination Thursday on the heels of a Golden Globe nod in December. The film also received a nod for best original screenplay.

Spinning movie sets combine with CGI to make the scene "more than gut-wrenching," wrote CNN's Tom Charity. Hitflix ranks it among the "most harrowing plane crashes ever seen."

(By the way, no spoilers here.)

Thanks to masterful editing, we see a series of jerky, split-second glimpses of an "engine failure" panel light and then an uncontrolled dive and a plunging altimeter. In a stunning command decision, Washington's character rolls the plane over on its back. We see tumbling passengers and tossed luggage and finally a smoky crash landing in an empty field.

The scene stands as a breathtaking masterpiece of Hollywood's dream machine, but it pales in comparison with United Flight 232, a deadly real-life airline disaster that -- like the movie --- could have been much worse if not for remarkable efforts by heroic crew members.

But first, is it possible to fly a commercial airliner upside down? Would excessive G-forces destroy it? That debate is raging right now on aviation Twitter feeds and websites.

In the film, the pilot rolls the plane over to keep it flying longer. He avoids crashing into a neighborhood, saving countless lives.

"Flight" director Robert Zemeckis, creator of the "Back to the Future" series, enjoyed a bit of artistic license here, said Larry Goodrich, the film's pilot consultant.

Goodrich, a 32-year pilot -- first with the Air Force, then with Delta Air Lines -- trained pilots to fly MD-88s, which the movie's plane most resembles.