Flight Plan

You ever have that film where you see it in the video store many years ago but have no idea what the film is? Then that very same film shows up in a bargain bin and you pick it up just based on the description on the back? Well, probably not, but that's my background of this film. To my surprise, this film is one great suspenseful ride. I love films that have you guessing right from the very beginning but never to the extent where you are disinterested. What helps with that is the unique premise and great cast. Jodie Foster brings her daughter on a plane from Berlin to New York and falls asleep, but as she wakes up, she discovers that her daughter is missing and may have never even gone on the plane. This film plays with the "unreliable narrator" technique, where you don't know if the story that is unfolding is based on the reality of the passengers or the reality inside Jodie Foster's. The answer may shock you. The best way to find that answer is to watch the film. It's a hidden gem.

First off, I loved "Panic Room" and Jodie Foster's performance in it. When I first saw the looks of this film, I was very intrigued and thought it was going to be a "The Forgotten 2"....i was very wrong.

What starts off is with Jodie Foster playing a mourning mother after the death of her husband. Her and her daughter catch a flight to go stay with Foster's grandparents, however, after Jodie's character falls asleep, the daughter is gone....and to make matters worst, she is told that she never existed...

Sounds like a good premise eh? Well that's what infused me to go and see it. It starts off well but once the daughter goes missing, it went downhill. Jodie's performance throughout is good, not Oscar worthy but it is one of the highlights of the film (as well as the ever-cool Sean Bean.) Unfortunately I can't go into great depth of anything else of the story because of spoilers, but I will say that the ending plot is horrible, totally impossible and so therefore ruins the impact of the film and its good beginning.

There are also a lot of other things that annoy me about the film, to cut a long list short here are some examples: - a brilliant, new state of the art plane...and there's hardly anyone on board.

• Foster's character, although confused and frustrated does get annoying after a bit, and seeing as w're meant to identify and sympathise with her, is not a good thing.

• The overall twist / ending plot is ridiculous, as I stated before.

My vote is 6/10....go see the film for the enjoyment of Jodie Foster and some thrills. however, do not expect a masterpiece..because this is FAR from great.

I have not seen that many Jodie Foster films, but being that she is a fairly well known actress and Flightplan's premise seemed as good as any's I gave it a shot when invited to an opening showing with two friends.

What followed was a mixture between humor, failed tension, and borderline entertainment.

Flightplan derives its plot from a Hitchcock standpoint: A woman (Foster) boards a plane with her daughter, falls asleep and discovers that the little girl is missing. In a frenzy to locate her missing child she frightens both crew and passengers alike in a search that may be only in her mind.

Trouble is Flightplan never builds much excitement, leaving the audience caught between wondering the truth behind the film's mystery and not really caring but hoping things get interesting before everything is over.

Jodie Foster plays a good anxious, worried mother and I had the urge to just reach up, slap her and say "Cut that out!" A well done acting role on her part that sparks empathy and emotional responses from those watching, bravo. Now if only the other characters could have been as successful...

A few seconds into Foster's flight we are introduced to Pigeon Eyes,(Peter Sarsgaard) a shady looking character who explains himself to be an air marshal. He sports a monotonous disposition that could rival Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker impression, except when situation demands a slightly more energetic tone of voice.

The entire films manages to hold itself together without boring the viewers but not exactly showing them the time of their life either. A few predictable plot twists manage to change things up just enough to have it stand out much better than some suspense thrillers (The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman springs to mind.).

Overall, Flightplan stands as an easily forgettable and average entry in the Jodie Foster film history.

5/10

"Flightplan" seems to have affected IMDb contributors like no other film in recent memory. Mostly is bad. We didn't catch up with this picture until recently. Frankly, we are puzzled as to why the hatred. Granted, the film had the potential for being better, but it's not the total failure as some of the comments in this forum will make one believe. It appears there's an agenda to mark "Flightplan" comments as not useful.

Director Robert Schwentke working with Peter Dowling and Billy Ray's screen play, hasn't added much to the film in order to make it a thriller to be reckoned with, but, in general, the film is not a total waste, as seems to be the perception among contributors.

In a way, "Flightplan" plays with the viewer's perception as to who is behind the disappearance of Julia, the six year old girl traveling with her mother, Kyle, to New York. Kyle has suffered a great tragedy in her life when her husband was found dead in her building's courtyard. The fact that Kyle hasn't been able to accept the death is clear in the first sequence when we see her sitting inside the Alexanderplaz metro station in Berlin.

Kyle, an aircraft designing engineer, is a good mother. One can imagine her panic when she wakes up from a nap to find Julia's gone. No one seems to have noticed the little girl; there is no record of she ever been on board. Kyle meets resistance from the crew of the flight. Even the sky marshal, Carson, is no help at all. What's a mother to do? If one is in Kyle's shoes, one starts taking matter into her own hands.

Jodie Foster does a good job portraying Kyle. She is a mother who doesn't take no for an answer. In fact, she is the one that unravels the mystery surrounding her daughter's disappearance. The climax sequence is perfectly set, as one would expect it to be.

Peter Sarsgaard, is Carson, the sky marshal traveling in the economy section. He is in charge of the safety of the passengers on the flight. In an unusual role for him, Mr. Sarsgaard has some good chances in the movie. Sean Bean plays the pilot of the jumbo jet. Kate Beahan is seen as one of the flight attendants. Erika Christiensen is also part of the crew.

The best way to enjoy the film is not to compare it to anything else and just go for the entertaining value in it because we know this is not a ground breaking film, but thanks to Mr. Schwentke and his cast, it offers us a bumpy ride of a film.

Feature films invite us to defy reality, believe a fiction, suspend disbelief. The actor has to make the unreal, real. Jodie Foster has done this in the past with notable success and strings of awards – and often chosen stories that parallel our unwillingness to accept: a rape victim that no-one believed, a paranoid in a locked room that had every reason to be afraid, a scientist that finds proof of aliens. In Flightplan she goes one further – a mother who loses her daughter during a transatlantic flight and whom no-one (including, most of the time, the audience) believes.

Aircraft engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is devastated by the sudden death of her husband. She flies his body back to New York on a state-of-the-art airliner which she designed. Dozing off for a few minutes on the plane, she awakes to find her six year old daughter is missing. Frantic searches ensue as the mounting evidence suggests the daughter was never on board.

Flightplan combines a taut psychological thriller with a deepening mystery and tremendous emotional punch. But does the denouement justify the storyline, the switching positions we are forced to adopt about Kyle's sanity and the existence of her daughter? Or is it simply a story that cashes in on current passenger apprehension over hijacking and Foster's considerable acting talent? Foster is at her best, an outraged, highly intelligent woman with a mother's bottled up and barely contained grief providing simmering emotional force.

It is a remarkable testament to Foster's talent that she can carry such an unlikely story. She imbues the confined space of an aircraft with an energy that doesn't wilt for a moment and ensures our attention never flags. Ably assisted by Sean Bean as the Captain, wanting to give her every benefit of doubt but increasingly forced to accept the evidence of his own eyes, and Air Marshall Peter Sarsgaard who plays an interesting yet inscrutable character, we are mesmerised by Kyle Pratt and our own difficulty in knowing whether to believe her. Whether the story was worthy of such talent is less clear. As the pieces unravel we are presented with a bewildering complexity of background information which, without Foster to carry it or Hitchcockian logic to prove it, we are tempted to dismiss with Flightplan as overambitious. As an exercise in powerful acting that stands up as a Saturday night thriller, Flightplan delivers in Club Class, but as the sum of its parts it is as convoluted and full of wishful thinking as someone trying to stretch out in Economy.