Jodie Foster's daughter disappears midway through a
flight
By John Hartl
Film critic, MSNBC
As empty experiences go, "Flightplan" is far from the best. Preposterous, sometimes silly
and ultimately dishonest, it nevertheless holds your attention for 90
minutes.
The plot
bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's twisty 1938
thriller, "The Lady Vanishes," in which a young American woman loses track
of an elderly English governess on a train trip. When the American awakes from a
nap, she can't find her companion. What's worse, the other passengers claim she
never existed. Is her mind playing tricks on her, or has the older woman been
kidnapped?
Jodie Foster faces a similar dilemma in "Flightplan,"
although the story has been relocated to a jumbo passenger plane, and the
missing female is her 6-year-old daughter (Marlene Lawson). Foster's distressed
character, Kyle Pratt, has recently lost her husband, whose coffin accompanies
her on a flight from Berlin to New York. Even before she boards the plane, she
appears to be slightly
unhinged.
When she awakens from a three-hour nap, Kyle can't find her child on the plane,
and she enlists the help of the captain (Sean Bean), an air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) and several flight attendants, who
help her search the plane. But no one seems to remember the child boarding the
plane with her mother, and when it turns out that the girl is not on the
passenger list — and may even have died with her father — Kyle's
credibility is shot.
She's treated as a nuisance, especially after she
spots an Arab passenger and accuses him of trying to hijack the plane. The
scriptwriters, Billy Ray (who wrote Sarsgaard's "Shattered Glass") and Peter A. Dowling ("Sealand"), briefly toy
with the idea that she's right — the Arab appears to have three
accomplices. The writers play with several other possibilities as the movie
coasts into its second hour, always on the lookout for another extreme twist to
keep the story spinning.
When the truth is revealed, it's so banal and
ridiculous that the movie has a hard time recovering the momentum of the early
scenes. The intense pace disappears, partly because the filmmakers (and one
major character) are forced to stop and explain the convoluted narrative. And it
takes a lot of explaining.
The German director, Robert Schwentke
("Tattoo"), does a neatly subversive job of leading the audience into several
traps. The final scenes may even make you feel as gullible and guilty as Kyle's
fellow passengers, who come close to succumbing to mob rule on more than one
occasion. Schwentke does what he can with the iffy material; he's particularly
ingenious at making the plane's monstrous scale seem creepy in itself. Whatever
the box-office fate of this film, he appears to have a bright future in American
thrillers.
In addition to the Hitchcock film, "Flightplan" bears more
than a passing resemblance to Foster's last hit movie, "Panic Room," in which she also played a fiercely protective
mother. As solid as her performance is in "Flightplan," there's little that's
exactly fresh about it.
More movies on MSNBC
Jodie Foster's daughter disappears midway through a
flight
By John Hartl
Film critic, MSNBC
As empty experiences go, "Flightplan" is far from the best. Preposterous, sometimes silly
and ultimately dishonest, it nevertheless holds your attention for 90
minutes.
The plot
bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock's twisty 1938
thriller, "The Lady Vanishes," in which a young American woman loses track
of an elderly English governess on a train trip. When the American awakes from a
nap, she can't find her companion. What's worse, the other passengers claim she
never existed. Is her mind playing tricks on her, or has the older woman been
kidnapped?
Jodie Foster faces a similar dilemma in "Flightplan,"
although the story has been relocated to a jumbo passenger plane, and the
missing female is her 6-year-old daughter (Marlene Lawson). Foster's distressed
character, Kyle Pratt, has recently lost her husband, whose coffin accompanies
her on a flight from Berlin to New York. Even before she boards the plane, she
appears to be slightly
unhinged.
When she awakens from a three-hour nap, Kyle can't find her child on the plane,
and she enlists the help of the captain (Sean Bean), an air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) and several flight attendants, who
help her search the plane. But no one seems to remember the child boarding the
plane with her mother, and when it turns out that the girl is not on the
passenger list — and may even have died with her father — Kyle's
credibility is shot.
She's treated as a nuisance, especially after she
spots an Arab passenger and accuses him of trying to hijack the plane. The
scriptwriters, Billy Ray (who wrote Sarsgaard's "Shattered Glass") and Peter A. Dowling ("Sealand"), briefly toy
with the idea that she's right — the Arab appears to have three
accomplices. The writers play with several other possibilities as the movie
coasts into its second hour, always on the lookout for another extreme twist to
keep the story spinning.
When the truth is revealed, it's so banal and
ridiculous that the movie has a hard time recovering the momentum of the early
scenes. The intense pace disappears, partly because the filmmakers (and one
major character) are forced to stop and explain the convoluted narrative. And it
takes a lot of explaining.
The German director, Robert Schwentke
("Tattoo"), does a neatly subversive job of leading the audience into several
traps. The final scenes may even make you feel as gullible and guilty as Kyle's
fellow passengers, who come close to succumbing to mob rule on more than one
occasion. Schwentke does what he can with the iffy material; he's particularly
ingenious at making the plane's monstrous scale seem creepy in itself. Whatever
the box-office fate of this film, he appears to have a bright future in American
thrillers.
In addition to the Hitchcock film, "Flightplan" bears more
than a passing resemblance to Foster's last hit movie, "Panic Room," in which she also played a fiercely protective
mother. As solid as her performance is in "Flightplan," there's little that's
exactly fresh about it.
More movies on MSNBC
