Ray Charles Video:

		List Price: $14.99		Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone Salesrank: 14091 Released: January 24, 2006
		Our Price: $4.15
		Used Price: $0.24
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Academy Award(R) winner Jodie Foster (Best Actress, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) gives an outstanding performance in the heart-pumping action thriller FLIGHTPLAN. Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's (Foster) 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter. From the producer of APOLLO 13 and A BEAUTIFUL MIND, FLIGHTPLAN is an intense, suspense-filled thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat the entire flight.

Description of Flightplan (Widescreen Edition):
Like a lot of stylishly persuasive thrillers, Flightplan is more fun to watch than it is to think about. There's much to admire in this hermetically sealed mystery, in which a propulsion engineer and grieving widow (Jodie Foster) takes her 6-year-old daughter (and a coffin containing her husband's body) on a transatlantic flight aboard a brand-new jumbo jet she helped design, and faces a mother's worst nightmare when her daughter (Marlene Lawston) goes missing. But how can that be? Is she delusional? Are the flight crew, the captain (Sean Bean) and a seemingly sympathetic sky marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) playing out some kind of conspiratorial abduction? In making his first English-language feature, German director Robert Schwentke milks the mother's dilemma for all it's worth, and Foster's intense yet subtly nuanced performance (which builds on a fair amount of post-9/11 paranoia) encompasses all the shifting emotions required to grab and hold your attention. Alas, this upgraded riff on Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (not to mention Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing) is ultimately too preposterous to hold itself together. Flightplan gives us a dazzling tour of the jumbo jet's high-tech innards, and its suspense is intelligently maintained all the way through to a cathartic conclusion, but the plot-heavy mechanics break down under scrutiny. Your best bet is to fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the thrills on a purely emotional level -- a strategy that worked equally well with Panic Room, Foster's previous thriller about a mother and daughter in peril. --Jeff Shannon

Flightplan (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
Good plot, but too drawn out
2009-12-11 - Now that you've gotten the drift of the movie plot (that of a panicked mother looking for her lost child) I can only say that I found the pacing of the movie way too slow. I would think that a truly excited, panicked mother would have everyone around her excited, if not screaming, too. These people all act as if they're on Xanax. None of them seem to identify with this young worried mother, even the couple with two intrusive kids in the seat ahead.

And Foster herself doesn't seem all that troubled to me. Yes, she goes through the motions, but she's way too controlled to be that worried over losing a 6 year old. I know how I'd be if I lost my 6 year old!

In short, the pacing of the movie was just too long and drawn out to sustain the suspense factor. A good effort by Jodie Foster, but not one of her best.

A smooth flight right into my DVD player...
2009-11-04 - For a fast paced thriller I must admit that `Flightplan' actually succeeds on many levels. The acting is committed (as it really needs to be and so often isn't in films of this nature) and the films construction is so tightly compacted that even when it doesn't make sense (and when you think about it, a lot of this movie doesn't) it doesn't matter because you are, most importantly, very entertained.

The film follows Kyle, a grieving widow transporting her husband's body home aboard a jet she helped design. She is accompanied by her daughter, but not for long, for no sooner do they take off her daughter up and disappears. She's frantic (who wouldn't be) but it soon becomes very clear that not only does no one truly believe her, but no one really wants to help her, including the sky marshal, Carson, no matter how sympathetic he seems (creepy).

Jodie Foster really delivers here, and she's not one who is all over my `must see' lists. I like her enough, but I find her highly overrated (I love `The Silence of the Lambs' as much as the next guy, but she wasn't even nomination worthy, let alone WIN worthy over the likes to Sarandon and Davis). Here, she is a complete joy to watch. This hardened woman scorned is her niche (I'd hate to see her play soft and pretty), and she is definitely believable in every scene, despite the fact that the plot is far from probable. I LOVE PETER SARSGAARD and so it's no surprise that he really steals this show for me. In fact, I love Peter Sarsgaard so much that I'm dedicating my next four (five total counting this one) to him and his greatness. Yes, he plays the `obvious creep' very well, but why fault him for doing what is asked of him exceedingly well (that's like faulting Scarlett Johansson for playing the man-eater perfectly). He is all sorts of spine chilling here and I adore that about his performance.

Sarsgaard is far from one trick, even if he has been labeled. Watch him in `Jarhead', `Garden State', `Kinsey', `Boys Don't Cry', `Shattered Glass', `Year of the Dog' and `The Salton Sea', just to mention a few. He has many faces. I really need to write a review on him as an actor soon!

Sean Bean and Erica Christensen (why has this girl disappeared?) are also very well used in their supporting roles here.

So, do I recommend this film? Yes. It is a fun, suspenseful and engaging ride that, despite a few flaws, will not lose your interest. I found that it failed to tie up a few loose ends and feeds into hysteria without purpose, but it is an easily dismissed issue. Just sit back and have fun.

Jodie Foster vs. The World
2009-10-26 - Jodie Foster makes the most of her opportunities to give us a suspenseful flight to N.Y. Many reviewers have provided background so I will simply indicate that I found it sufficiently gripping to keep me in my chair most of the time the DVD was playing...a rare occurrence. Sure one can poke holes in the plot afterwards, if that gives one pleasure; I am happy to let them paper over any flaws as long as the tension is maintained. That the director does. Jodie Foster is the central focus and at the heart of almost every scene. The others support ably as crew and passengers of a very big plane. Should please most if it is your night for some distraught emoting.

How to Squander an Idea
2009-08-30 - "Flightplan" is an object lesson in Hollywood film-making. That is why it fails so badly.
It takes what is a tight little idea (is the mother crazy from grief or did the girl vanish on the plane) and absolutely buries it under a bigger and bigger plot that is increasingly absurd.

Foster carries the beginning of the film well as she ramps up the hysteria, but it soon becomes evident that FAA flight rules have been ignored in this one.

There is no way she would be allowed to raise hell like this for that long and run through a plane without being restrained, as anyone who has ever flown knows.
The search of the plane, the captain having all the time in the world to just chat with her....that is more than just stupid, even with the co-pilot on the job.

The air marshal sarcastically saying to her "I understand why your husband jumped" by way of putting her down...he's supposed to be a cop and he is saying this to a woman who is already showing severe mental stress...right.

There is dramatic licence and then there is insulting the viewer.

The script includes an Arab man and his son being seen as 'natural' suspects, first by Foster and then by a redneck on the plane. It is inserted simply as a cheap thrill for the audience, and should tell you the level at which the scriptwriters are operating.

The beginning premise would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. Instead, it made a lousy film.


"Rube Goldberg's revenge" or "watch, don't think"
2009-07-27 - I would give the film 4 or 5 stars for entertainment, but then the end arrives, and the implausible and ridiculous resolution of the mystery deserves one star, so I averaged on 3. If you intend to watch the movie, stop reading here. *Spoilers *

The basic problem of the film was put so well by reviewer Omer Belsky that I would dare quoting liberally from him: "It's quite clear that the creators first imagined the scenario and later tried to desperately come up with a plot to explain all the strange events of the film. They failed." (The scenario obviously started with: <>)

More from Mr. Belsky (with my additions at the end): "At least three conspirators (including the head of a German morgue) have murdered Foster's husband, hid detonation devices in the coffin, and later kidnapped her daughter. Why? Because as a flight engineer, Foster is a perfect alternative suspect to the real criminals, who plan on hijacking the plane for money, and then pinning the killing on Foster, who is expected to be conveniently dead by that time." (One of the conspirators is an Air Marshal and the other is a flight attendant. These two had no simpler ways to sneak a bomb into the plane? They did what they did because coffins are never checked at airports? If only drug dealers would know that...)

Mr. Belsky again: "Sounds overly complicated? Wait, there is more. With the help of the corrupt Berlin morgue director, the hijackers create the illusion that Foster's daughter had died along with her father. Thus, when Foster summons up the Captain and the crew to help search for the little girl, they doubt her sanity. Now this is preposterous. The plot relays on no one noticing Foster's daughter as she boards and enters the plane. How could they count on it on advance?"

To this observation I would add: we are told that no one noticed the girl because Foster & daughter were the first to board the plane. Let alone the fact that the first (or the last in a line) are usually more conspicuous than someone in a crowd: the announcement was "passengers with children first" so if there was no child with Foster, nobody wonders why Foster boarded first?

Back to Mr. Belsky: "Furthermore, they have phones on planes nowadays. After the Captain informs Foster that the morgue in Berlin told him that she was dead, all she has to do is call the nanny who had been with the child when the father had died, and get corroboration for her story. Of course she doesn't." (...) "But even if nobody did that, and the hijackers do manage to take the daughter's boarding pass from the mother without anyone noticing, there is still the risk that while searching the plane, the crew would have stumbled on the girl anyway."

To elaborate on Omer Belsky's insights: the girl was openly lying on a bulkhead for everyone to see. How come no crew person saw her during the search? They didn't know that part of the plane exists?

This links with the reason why, other than the Hollywood happy ending requirement, the conspirators --who had murdered the husband already-- did not kill the girl (a possible witness!) right away. Or at least tied up, gagged and perhaps caged her, to make sure she does not wake up and returns on her own before time. No, they didn't; the girl is found untied, just sleeping on a bulkhead, as if the conspirators did not have the forethought of bringing a box or a rope in the plane.

How did the bad guy manage to carry an unconscious girl through all the nooks and crannies, stairs and hatches, without being noticed? Much later, he goes the same route in order to install the bomb. Why -apart from the customary Hollywood requirement- did he not set the bomb the first time he was there?

The unbelievably tortuous plan conceived by the bad guys is the criminal equivalent to a Rube Goldberg contraption, only funnier.

And remember that all this convoluted scheming is just to extort 50 million from the airline on the threat of a bomb. Wouldn't be much easier, say, to sneak the bomb in the plane, perhaps kill a passenger during the night (to make a strong statement) and leave a message to the captain pinned on the corpse? They could even misdirect suspicions by adding some political or religious statement to the threat. Of course, this would no longer be a "Lady Vanishes on a Plane" scenario, so if that idea must be kept, here goes a simpler alternative: The bad guy kidnapped the girl because she spotted him while setting up the bomb.

The criminal plot also relies on that the Captain, when he receives the extortion message, decides not to confront Foster. Such dialogue would have exposed that Foster knew nothing about the money and immediately threw suspicions on the air marshal, precisely the opposite result of what the conspirators were trying to accomplish with all these contrived preparations.

The bad guys were not the only ones acting weird: the girl was drugged --or otherwise knocked unconscious-- and left exposed for hours in a probably non heated part of the plane, and she is still visibly asleep when, in the end, she is carried in Foster's arms towards the authorities. However, the ambulance services do not assist the daughter nor take her to an hospital. They allow the girl to stay with Foster in the vicinity of the plane explosion, I guess to meet the requisite Hollywood end-of-movie conversation.

There is more, of course, but to conclude: Entertaining, if you stop thinking.