Flightplan is a claustrophobic thriller that implodes under it's own convoluted plot. The first two thirds of the movie are a superb dramatization of paranoia and fear as a mother looks for her daughter, who seems to have vanished from an airplane mid-flight.
Jodie Foster plays the mother, Kyle Pratt; an aeronautics engineer responsible designing the engines for a the airplane they are traveling in. She has recently lost her husband and is now flying her daughter and his body back to Long island to be buried. Three hours into the trip her daughter vanishes. She begins to search for her and engages the Captain and crew to assist her. Things go from bad to worse when no one remembers seeing her daughter and a message from Berlin states the little girl was killed along with her father.
Peter Sarsgaard is Gene Carson, an Air Marshall who assist her in her search and Sean bean is the airline Captain who is sympathetic to her plight, until she starts endangering the other passengers.
The movie builds tension and forces Jodie Foster and the audience to wonder if the daughter was even real and Foster's performance throughout is excellent. But in the third act, when the secrets are revealed the story twists and turns with ridiculous coincidences and plot twists that bring the story down with a crashing thud.
There is also a plot device that relies on condensation on a window. As far as I can recall all aircraft windows are doubled sealed and I have never seen condensation form on the interior of an airplane window. Maybe I am wrong, I'll have to test it the next time I fly.
At the Movie House rating **1/2 stars
1 comment:
was this the asinine movie where the big plot twist revolves around the air marshall ending up being the bad guy and the terrorist lookalikes being the good guys...if so, I remember seeing it coming from a mile away and declaring it to be tripe nonsense
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