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FLIGHTPLAN
Despite some plot holes you can drive a truck through, the 2005 film Flightplan draws the viewer completely into an improbable story thanks to evocative direction and the accustomed powerhouse lead performance from Jodie Foster, an actress who can make the most implausible story completely riveting.
Foster plays Kyle Pratt, an engineer who has flown to Berlin with her six year old daughter to retrieve the body of her recently deceased husband, also an engineer and return the body back to the states. Kyle and her daughter board a plane back to the states with her husband's casket in the cargo area. Shortly after takeoff, Kyle and her daughter move to the back of the massive airliner to stretch out and take a nap. Kyle wakes up a short time later to discover her daughter missing.
What we become witness to is an elaborate conspiracy manifested through a parental nightmare as we see the flight crew actually try to convince Kyle that her daughter was never on this flight despite the fact that we have seen her daughter on board, we have seen people on the flight who have seen Kyle's daughter who are now pretending that they didn't and an air marshall (Peter Sarsgaard) who befriends Kyle almost immediately without mentioning or acknowledging her daughter's presence and is slow to cooperate with Kyle when she claims her daughter is missing. The final clue that we are in the middle of a major conspiracy is that after Kyle is initially told that her daughter was never on the plane and that no one saw her, Kyle is then told that her daughter died along with her husband.
This story is, on the surface, a little ridiculous, because we saw Kyle and daughter Julia get on the plane, but what does begin to intrigue the viewer, and director Robert Schwentke must be credited for this, is trying to figure out who is in on this who is not and how they feel about it. Pulling off a conspiracy like this requires intimate attention to detail and someone with power over an awful lot of people who can command their silence and stage things without the knowledge of the flight crew because at the beginning of the story, it appears that several members of the flight crew are in on what's going on, but this turns out to be a large red herring that is pretty difficult to believe especially the way Schwentke has the flight crew play the story. This is where the screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray has to eat a lot of what's wrong with this story because there's just too much left unexplained here...the night before Kyle boards her flight, she observes a couple of Arabs watching her hotel room and then sees them on the flight. They are revealed as being innocent, but why were they watching Kyle's hotel room?
Despite the problems with this improbable story, I could not take my eyes off the screen, thanks primarily to Jodie Foster, an actress who completely invests in every role she takes on and makes you believe anything she says and does onscreen and Sarsgaard is sinister and sexy as the air marshall. Mention should also be made of Sean Bean as the captain and Kate Beahan as an icy flight attendant. Superb work from the art direction/set direction departments who make this airliner feel gigantic and claustrophobic at the same time. Sound editing and an appropriately moody music score are the other final touches to a drama that seems a lot better than it really is because the right actress was cast in the leading role.
Despite some plot holes you can drive a truck through, the 2005 film Flightplan draws the viewer completely into an improbable story thanks to evocative direction and the accustomed powerhouse lead performance from Jodie Foster, an actress who can make the most implausible story completely riveting.
Foster plays Kyle Pratt, an engineer who has flown to Berlin with her six year old daughter to retrieve the body of her recently deceased husband, also an engineer and return the body back to the states. Kyle and her daughter board a plane back to the states with her husband's casket in the cargo area. Shortly after takeoff, Kyle and her daughter move to the back of the massive airliner to stretch out and take a nap. Kyle wakes up a short time later to discover her daughter missing.
What we become witness to is an elaborate conspiracy manifested through a parental nightmare as we see the flight crew actually try to convince Kyle that her daughter was never on this flight despite the fact that we have seen her daughter on board, we have seen people on the flight who have seen Kyle's daughter who are now pretending that they didn't and an air marshall (Peter Sarsgaard) who befriends Kyle almost immediately without mentioning or acknowledging her daughter's presence and is slow to cooperate with Kyle when she claims her daughter is missing. The final clue that we are in the middle of a major conspiracy is that after Kyle is initially told that her daughter was never on the plane and that no one saw her, Kyle is then told that her daughter died along with her husband.
This story is, on the surface, a little ridiculous, because we saw Kyle and daughter Julia get on the plane, but what does begin to intrigue the viewer, and director Robert Schwentke must be credited for this, is trying to figure out who is in on this who is not and how they feel about it. Pulling off a conspiracy like this requires intimate attention to detail and someone with power over an awful lot of people who can command their silence and stage things without the knowledge of the flight crew because at the beginning of the story, it appears that several members of the flight crew are in on what's going on, but this turns out to be a large red herring that is pretty difficult to believe especially the way Schwentke has the flight crew play the story. This is where the screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray has to eat a lot of what's wrong with this story because there's just too much left unexplained here...the night before Kyle boards her flight, she observes a couple of Arabs watching her hotel room and then sees them on the flight. They are revealed as being innocent, but why were they watching Kyle's hotel room?
Despite the problems with this improbable story, I could not take my eyes off the screen, thanks primarily to Jodie Foster, an actress who completely invests in every role she takes on and makes you believe anything she says and does onscreen and Sarsgaard is sinister and sexy as the air marshall. Mention should also be made of Sean Bean as the captain and Kate Beahan as an icy flight attendant. Superb work from the art direction/set direction departments who make this airliner feel gigantic and claustrophobic at the same time. Sound editing and an appropriately moody music score are the other final touches to a drama that seems a lot better than it really is because the right actress was cast in the leading role.