Flightplan is one of those hard to review movies. I can't say much without giving anything away but I'll try. Jodie Foster plays Kyle Pratt, an aeronautical engineer who's husband died in Berlin. She's flying the body back to New York with her daughter Julia. A little bit into the flight Kyle wakes up from a nap to find Julia missing, but how could a 6 year-old go missing on a plane in mid-flight?
So that's the setup, I won't give anything else away. It sounds a lot like Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, updated from a train to a plane, and it is. They even use a similar plot device. The pacing is good as it keeps progressing from looking in one place after another, believing her, thinking she's crazy, etc.
Foster's performance as a frantic mom is strong. Peter Sarsgaard is also good an air marshall. This film could have done a lot with a small, enclosed, claustrophobic environment. Instead they chose to set it on a new model spacious jumbo jet. The director, Robert Schwentke, hasn't done much else and there's little visual pinache. David Fincher did a much more interesting job in Foster's last film Panic Room. I was annoyed by a stupid shot of the plane which was sideways for no good reason. I've seen this done recently and blocked out what film it was (maybe Ocean's Twelve).
I had a fine time during the film being ahead of Kyle sometimes, behind her at others, believing her sometimes and not on others. In the end, the plot stretches feasibility and I'm sure in a few days I'll forget about it.
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