Credit: DVDtown.com
Directed:
Robert Schwentke
Cast
Jodie Foster …. Kyle
Peter Sarsgaard …. Carson
Sean Bean …. Captain Rich
Kate Beahan …. Stephanie
Michael Irby …. Obaid
Assaf Cohen …. Ahmed
Erika Christensen …. Fiona
Shane Edelman …. Mr. Loud
Mary Gallagher …. Mrs. Loud
Haley Ramm …. Brittany Loud
Forrest Landis …. Rhett Loud
Jana Kolesarova …. Claudia
Brent Sexton …. Elias
Marlene Lawston …. Julia
The Movie
Does it seem to anyone else that Jodie Foster is kind of coasting now after her earlier successes? After spending her whole lifetime making superior films such as Taxi Driver, The Accused and Silence of the Lambs, it seems she hasn’t been doing very serious work the last few years. While Anna and the King was opposite Chow Yun Fat and Panic Room had David Fincher directing it, neither were exactly the edgy material we had seen from the actress beforehand.
With Flightplan we see a Foster that may be regaining her footing a bit. The beginning especially has some nice touches of gravitas that actually get you into the film before the real hysterics begin. Unfortunately, in what starts off as an entertaining, intelligent thriller starts to go off the rails a bit toward the film’s finale as it gets more and more predictable.
Foster plays Kyle, an aircraft engineer living in Berlin, who has recently lost her husband under mysterious circumstances. From the beginning, Director Robert Schwentke sets up the film to put the question in your mind of whether or not Kyle is on the brink of insanity due to the emotional strain. Some may find the approach a little heavy-handed, but its nice to see a director really trying put you in the right frame of mind for the rest of the film.
Kyle plans on taking her husband’s body to the U.S., where it will be buried with his family. Going with her is her small child Julia, who is introduced as timid and shaken by the week’s events. An early scene where the girl wanders off, making the mother instantly frantic adds some nice foreshadowing to what will become the picture’s main plot.
The story really gets going once the plane is off the ground. Due to exhaustion, Kyle falls asleep. When she awakes Julia is missing. From this point the film kicks into high gear, but actually stays kind of low key, slowly building the tension further and further. Red herrings start piling up, which are sometimes good and other times not so good. Did we really need the only Arabs on the plane being accused? With everyone actually starting to doubt whether or not Jodie Foster’s Kyle is actually crazy, the tension does get to a fever pitch, but can’t keep up the momentum. Unfortunately, what starts off as a very promising Hitchcock-like picture ends up with a rather pedestrian finale, but still has its high points.
Jodie Foster does give quite the accomplished performance here. Her bereavement seems genuine as is her hysteria. At no point does she seems as if she’s just here to collect a paycheck, but instead is quite moving in some sequences. Foster shows why she is still considered one of Hollywood’s best actresses, but I can’t understand why she doesn’t find better material.
The cast also includes two more first rate performers in Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean. Sarsgaard, who is one of the best young character actors working right now, plays Carson, an Air Marshall trying to help find the young girl before the mom’s hysteria becomes a threat to the plane’s safety. Sean Bean is the pilot, Captain Rich. His scenes are quite good as he also wants to believe Kyle as much as possible but finally has to concede that she may be going insane.
Overall, the film is going along pretty swimmingly until the very end where it gets tragically conventional. If only more thought could have been put into the plot to make it as clever as the first 2/3rds of the picture. Up until that point, Flightplan is a tense mystery that builds and builds until it falls under the weight of its own screenplay. The film is good, but could have been something great. The film ends up working, but limps to the finish instead of sprinting.
Score: 6.5
The DVD:
The Video
The film looks tremendous. The colors are bright and the interiors of the set are beautiful to look at. The film is presented in Anamorphic Widescreen with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1.
The Audio
The Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio track is also quite nice. A film like this needs a good soundtrack to help with the tension that slowly works up and this one has a really good one.
SPECIAL FEATURES: The In-Flight Movie: The Making Of Flightplan, Cabin Pressure: Designing the Aalto E-474, Audio Commentary.
The In-Flight Movie: The Making Of Flightplan – This is a multi-part Documentary that runs about 38 minutes total. There are some interesting tidbits here about how the film evolved. Most interesting is that the film was actually written for a man (most likely Sean Penn), but then switched gears mid-way through as the producers hired Jodie Foster. This is also why the chacter has the male name Kyle.
Cabin Pressure: Designing the Aalto E-474 – This plane in the film is the like the Titanic of commercial aircraft. This thing has two layers of passenger sections as well as an attic and an cargo hold. This featurette goes into major detail about the design of this fake plane.
Audio Commentary by Director Robert Schwentke – The director’s commentary is decent, but nothing to write home about. It’s interesting to learn that filming on the top and
Bottom sections of the aircraft had to be shot at different times because they were actually the same set dressed differently.
Score: 5.0
