Jodie Foster wonders how she got traped in this subpar thriller

Flightplan" explodes on takeoff

By: Ben Marxer

Posted: 9/28/05

As selective as Oscar winner Jodie Foster seems to be in choosing roles (she's only starred in five films in the past 10 years), you have to wonder exactly how her decision process goes.

She passes up the chance to revisit the Clarice Starling role that made her famous. Then she resurfaces in a film like this week's new release "Flightplan," a film that appears to be a run-of-the-mill action/thriller. Does Jodie know something we don't? Let's find out.

"Flightplan" puts forth a Hitchcock-esque scenario, with similar suspenseful results. Foster plays an aeronautics engineer flying to New York on a new two-story 450-passenger plane she helped design. When her daughter disappears without a trace, maternal panic turns into claustrophobic chaos as the plane is searched from aft to stern to locate the missing girl. Things are complicated further when no evidence can be found that the girl ever boarded the plane to begin with. Is it all in her head? Or is she the target of a widespread conspiracy? Tune in next week to find out.

The main source of drama and anxiety in "Flightplan" is the combination of two common fears: air travel and losing a child. I suppose that might be why part of the growing drama was lost on me.

Everything that could possibly give someone apprehension about flying was portrayed in vivid detail - annoying children in the seats ahead of you, people getting sick next to you, adverse weather conditions, constant turbulence, bitchy flight attendants, possible terrorist threat and the explosive tension of a growing sense of dread amongst people in a confined space.

For anybody with Pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying), watching this film will be as unnerving as Arrow managing editor Ryan King would be watching "Fire in the Sky" (Ryan is afraid of aliens). But I myself have never had any sort of aviation anxiety, so I didn't get much of the film's suspense.

The main focus of drama in the film, the intense fear resulting from having lost a child in a public place, was similarly wasted on me. Foster does a superb job in making this sense of dread palpable.

However, I think that since I lack that ingrained maternal instinct to protect one's young from harm, or perhaps since I don't possess children of my own, the true essence of the drama of the film just did not affect me.

It's not that I didn't sympathize with Foster's plight. It's just that I'm missing that part of personality that instinctually protects from harm those things that one finds valuable and important. You should see how banged up my cell phone is.

There comes a challenge when constructing a suspense-thriller storyline in the resolution part of the plot. Anybody can write a convoluted and puzzling plot that keeps audiences guessing as to what is truly going on. But plot lines often fall apart in the third act when the film must unravel the shoestring mess that they made in the first hour.

Resolutions often fail to live up to the lofty expectations that audiences are left with after the initial buildup. And I completely sympathize with the plight of screenwriters in this aspect. Twist endings in films are so common these days as to be expected and somewhat contrived. Plus, it's not like the good-ol'-days of cinema when audiences could be wowed with plot climaxes like "it was all in his head all along" or "the house/child/dog/ was possessed by Satan/ghosts/aliens." I think we've all been running out of ideas.

"Flightplan" falls into this all-too-common cinematic bear trap. As the drama developed, the film put forth an intriguing scenario, but in the last half-hour, it all dissolves like Ramen soup mix in boiling water. A little girl disappears on an airplane, which leaves the audience and the characters with an interesting question - where could she have gone?

The whole time I'm watching the first half of the film I'm thinking, yeah, this is great and all, but how are you going to explain it all in the end? Was it in her mind the whole time? Is there something supernatural at work? I couldn't think of any explanation that wouldn't be a huge let down. In the end, I was right. The ending of this film is formulaic, anticlimactic and full of plot holes.

Though the drama was artificial, it did its job. The plot is engaging enough to keep you too preoccupied to wonder about the various non sequiturs. In addition, the film is visually beautiful. The montage work, the dissolves, the visual metaphors of little-known German director Robert Schwentke show a passion for the visual by a director not yet jaded by the cookie-cutter cannon of Hollywood filmmaking.

Though dramatic, competently acted and visually appealing, this isn't a great film. If you want Hitchcockian-level suspense and cinematic artistry, then go rent a Hitchcock film. I recommend "Vertigo."