Flightplan mostly works. A taut Hitchcockian thriller about a woman who has lost her child on a plane, it is beautifully shot and well-acted, and the jetliner, a double-decker jumbo, provides an unusual setting with more hiding places for action than one would have expected. Director Robert Schwentke does a good job of keeping the action flowing and keeping audiences involved and guessing, helped by his professional cast including Jodie Foster, Peter Saarsgard, Erika Christensen and Sean Bean.
Kyle Pratt (Foster), is flying back to the US with her 6-year old daughter and the corpse of her husband, who died in a fall. During the flight Foster drifts off to sleep, and when she awakens her child is no longer in her seat. At first she assumes her daughter has just wandered off, but upon scouring the plane looking for her, becomes more concerned. At last the flight crew also searches. They cannot find her either, and no one can remember seeing the child. At last the truth comes out - the child was never on board the plane. Not only that, but the child died with her father. Pratt is suffering from delusions that her child is alive in a way to combat her grief.
At this point the film has developed into an interesting psychological thriller told from the point of view of the delusional passenger. What follows, in explaining this delusion, and Pratt's actions are what will take the film to the next level.
Without providing too many spoilers, this is the point where the film begins to fray. When the machinations of the villains are explained, they require an extraordinary level of unwitting cooperation from Pratt and others for success. Their plan is ENTIRELY based upon Pratt reacting to the situation precisely as they predict, and on the assumption that Pratt and the captain of the plane will not sit down and talk face-to-face at a critical juncture of the film. It is as if the screenwriters started with a cockamamie jigsaw piece and from there back-constructed their story to fit. It works until that ill-formed piece is shown, and everything thereafter suffers.
However, Flightplan is still worth a look. From the grey, sterile, beautifully antiseptic plane to Foster's reactions as she has to come to the realization that she may be crazy, and the dreamlike atmosphere of the film to this point, put it a notch above the average thriller.
Kyle Pratt (Foster), is flying back to the US with her 6-year old daughter and the corpse of her husband, who died in a fall. During the flight Foster drifts off to sleep, and when she awakens her child is no longer in her seat. At first she assumes her daughter has just wandered off, but upon scouring the plane looking for her, becomes more concerned. At last the flight crew also searches. They cannot find her either, and no one can remember seeing the child. At last the truth comes out - the child was never on board the plane. Not only that, but the child died with her father. Pratt is suffering from delusions that her child is alive in a way to combat her grief.
At this point the film has developed into an interesting psychological thriller told from the point of view of the delusional passenger. What follows, in explaining this delusion, and Pratt's actions are what will take the film to the next level.
Without providing too many spoilers, this is the point where the film begins to fray. When the machinations of the villains are explained, they require an extraordinary level of unwitting cooperation from Pratt and others for success. Their plan is ENTIRELY based upon Pratt reacting to the situation precisely as they predict, and on the assumption that Pratt and the captain of the plane will not sit down and talk face-to-face at a critical juncture of the film. It is as if the screenwriters started with a cockamamie jigsaw piece and from there back-constructed their story to fit. It works until that ill-formed piece is shown, and everything thereafter suffers.
However, Flightplan is still worth a look. From the grey, sterile, beautifully antiseptic plane to Foster's reactions as she has to come to the realization that she may be crazy, and the dreamlike atmosphere of the film to this point, put it a notch above the average thriller.