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Flightplan
2005 - PG-13 - 90 minutes Mins.
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| Director: Robert Schwentke | | Producer: Robert DiNozzi | | Written By: Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray | | Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Saarsgard, Sean Bean |
| Review by: Tamika Johnson |
| Official Site: flightplan.movies.go.com/ |
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What would you do if you lost your child on a jumbo jet you helped build and no one believed you? Not only do they not believe you but they are telling you that there isn’t even a record of her being on board? Well those are the problems facing Jodie Foster’s character in her new film “Flightplan” an almost edge of your seat suspense thriller that never quite makes it there.
The movie begins with Kyle (Jodie Foster) having to secure her husband’s body for transport as she and her daughter, Julia (Marlene Lawston) return to the States from Germany. After boarding the plane and settling in for a little lap, Kyle wakes up to find Julia missing and no one on the plane seems to remember ever having seen her on board, flight attendants included. So begins the action as Kyle tries to convince everyone her daughter is on the plane and is missing, while everyone else tries to decide what to do with this crazy lady.
I’ll give director Robert Schwentke a little credit -- on some levels “Flightplan” works. He does an excellent job of setting up Foster’s character as a little disturbed. You question her husband’s death and the circumstances surrounding that death; whether or not her daughter is missing or not; and her sanity throughout the film. And I must admit there are several cringe inducing sequences as Foster tries to convince everyone she is not delusional and instead ends up looking as loony as a bed bug.
The biggest problem with “Flightplan,” however is that you basically stay one step ahead of the action the entire time the movie manages to string you along for the first half hour but the last hour you can easily pick out the villains and while you may not guess exactly how it ends, you’re still pretty clear on what the end result is going to be. And the actual climax to resolution of the movie is so predictable that the last twenty minutes you could sleep through and you wouldn’t miss much. Part of the predictability you can blame on a movie trailer that basically reveals the entire film and the other part is that the script and/or direction just didn’t leave enough to the imagination to keep you guessing.
Like I said the movie isn’t all bad. There are some decent performances by Peter Saarsgard as Carson, a plains clothes federal official on board the flight, and Jan Kolesarvoa as Claudia a particularly bitchy fight attendant. And Foster isn’t bad as Kyle, you truly believe her level of grief, despair and anger as she can’t find her child and no one who believes her or is willing to help her.
If you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time then go see “Flightplan”. If you have something better to do then wait until it comes out on DVD. It will make an excellent rental and will be will cheaper then spending ten bucks on a movie ticket.
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