Flightplan

This film was seen on September 24 2005 at 7:15pm in the Coral Ridge 10 Cinema at the Mall.

This newest Jodie Foster piece has a similar idea to an earlier release this summer called Red Eye. After 9/11 brought the prevalent threat of terrorism in the air into the American psyche, more and more airplane action and terror films seems to be the norm. That being said, Jodie Foster is still one of the best actresses in Hollywood and most scripts she chooses are usually worthwhile, so I decided to see this one simply because she was going to be in it.

The film takes the tragedy of a woman who recently lost her husband and is taking her young daughter, Julia (played by Marlene Lawston), with her from Germany back to the U.S. During the plane flight, she wakes up after a short nap only to find Julia is missing. Early scenes lead us slowly into this flight and into the shaky emotional state of Foster's Kyle character during her time of grief.

With a strong supporting cast such as Sean Bean as the pilot (the bad guy in last year's National Treature), Peter Sarsgaard as an airline agent (another bad guy, this time in this year's Skeleton Key), and Erika Christensen as a flight attendant (the bad girl from the 2002 film Swimfan), the script itself really does hinge on Jodie Foster's ability to play her character in order to pull the film off entirely. Few actresses could have succeeded, and Flightplan does a great job of lifting us into suspense and confusion along with Foster's own emotional roller coaster ride.

I would recommend this film, especially if you like Jodie Foster or enjoy plane-based movies (or if you want to see the hunky Sean Bean in a role where he isn't a total arrogant git). I am going to rank it as a good and it is one of the year's better movies.

Please feel free to comment on this review or on the movie itself at the forum thread devoted to it at this location.