Marlene Lawston and Jodie Foster in FLIGHTPLAN (2005).
© Touchstone Pictures
Reviewed Format: Theatrical Release
Rated: PG-13
Stars: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean
Writers: Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray
Director: Robert Schwentke
Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
FLIGHTPLAN
By: Abbie BernsteinReview Date: Friday, September 23, 2005
Given the close timing of their respective releases, it's hard to avoid comparing FLIGHTPLAN to the somewhat similar RED EYE and coming to the conclusion that FLIGHTPLAN is the movie RED EYE was trying to be. While still not free of plausibility issues, the movie sustains a sense of tension and intrigue (we wonder exactly what's going on here), with just enough red herrings and clever misleads to keep us on our toes.
Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is in a state of obvious emotional frailty when we meet her. Kyle and little daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are flying back to New York from Berlin, where they've been living, to bury Kyle's husband/Julia's father David (John Benjamin Hickey), who has died suddenly in questionable circumstances. Kyle is at least able to reassure Julia about the airplane as an engine designer, Kyle knows all about aircraft design. Mother and daughter both lie down for naps after takeoff and when Kyle wakes up, Julia is missing. Moreover, no one remembers seeing the little girl on the plane.
One of the best things about FLIGHTPLAN is that it sometimes allows Julia to be dead wrong part of what keeps the movie airborne, so to speak, is making us guess just when that is. Robert Schwentke's direction (not to mention the film's ad campaign) don't invite us to seriously suppose that Kyle is so overwhelmed by grief that she's invented her daughter's presence, but the script by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray stays far enough ahead of us long enough for us to be engaged throughout in guessing what is going on not to mention occasionally floored by how extraordinarily far Kyle will go in her efforts to search for her missing daughter.
FLIGHTPLAN is at its best when there's utter social chaos as a result of Kyle's mixture of understandable maternal overdrive and outright paranoia it's not nearly as clearcut and thus far more enjoyable and engaging than movies with righteous heroines (especially heroines who are mothers of young children) tend to be.
However, while the developments are entertaining to us and unquestionably cinematic, something the film is a bit vague on is whether Kyle in her desperation no longer cares about the potential consequences of some of her acts, or whether she is genuinely naïve about the possible fallout (as someone who has worked for the airlines, she would not be unaware). Foster, an actress whose intelligence we do not question for one moment, doesn't answer the question in her performance we're unsure whether the filmmakers expect us to applaud Kyle's single-mindedness or just overlook what even the non-airline employees among us know.
Foster is riveting at all times, with fine support from Peter Sarsgaard as the on-board air marshal who projects an air of weary sanity as he tries to handle one apparently crazy (but possibly not) passenger without freaking out all the others. Sean Bean has appropriate gravity as the increasingly beleaguered captain and Kate Beahan and Erika Christensen are both notable as stewardesses who have very different reactions to Kyle's behavior.
FLIGHTPLAN is not a perfect thriller it has a few too many stretches of credibility but it plays quickly and crisply and keeps us guessing right until it's ready to make it's big reveal and not before. This, along with Foster's ace central performance, makes it worthwhile.
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