Flightplan

Plot synopsis:
Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a propulsion engineer based in Berlin, Germany. Her husband David (John Benjamin Hickey) died from falling off the roof of an avionic manufacturing building, and now Kyle and her six year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are flying home to Long Island to bury him and stay with Kyle's parents. They fly aboard a passenger aircraft, an Elgin 474, which Kyle helped design. After falling asleep for a few hours, Kyle wakes to find that Julia is missing. After trying to remain calm at first, she begins to panic, and Captain Marcus Rich (Sean Bean) is forced to conduct a search. Kyle walks the aisles, questioning people, but none of her fellow passengers remember having seen her daughter. One of the flight attendants calls in to the airport they just departed from and, shockingly, the gate attendant says that they have no record of Julia boarding the flight. In addition, according to the passenger manifest, Julia's seat is registered empty. When Kyle checks for Julia's boarding pass, it is missing.Marcus refuses to allow the cargo hold to be searched because the searchers could be hurt if the plane shifted due to turbulence. Both Marcus and the other crew members suspect that Kyle has become unhinged by her husband's recent death, and has imagined bringing her daughter aboard. One flight attendant Stephanie (Kate Beahan) is exceptionally unsympathetic. Faced with the crew's increasing skepticism regarding her daughter's existence, Kyle becomes more and more desperate. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) is ordered by Marcus to guard and handcuff her.Later on, Marcus receives a wire from the hospital in Berlin. It says that Julia was with her father when he fell off the roof, and she also died of internal injuries. Kyle furiously denies that, consistently claiming that she brought Julia aboard. The crew now believes she is delusional and she is brought back to her seat by Air Marshal Carson. A therapist (Greta Scacchi) on board tries to console her, causing Kyle for a moment to doubt her own sanity until she notices that a heart Julia had drawn earlier on the window next to her seat is real. Kyle is emboldened and convinces the therapist to let her use the bathroom. With her handcuffs now removed, she climbs into the upper compartment and sabotages the aircraft's electronics, deploying the oxygen masks and interrupting lighting. Some passengers brawl with the red herring Arab passengers on board. She uses the chaos to take an elevator to the lower freight deck. She desperately searches for Julia and finally opens her husband's casket to which she emotionally breaks down. Carson finds her and escorts her back.Kyle makes a final plea to Carson that she needs to search the plane upon landing. Carson considers for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain," against flight attendant Stephanie's command (they are landing), leaving the audience to momentarily believe he is sympathetic. Instead, he sneaks back into the freight deck to remove two small explosives and a detonator concealed in David's casket. He then climbs down to a part of the avionics section, revealing Julia is sleeping (presumably drugged) with her coat and backpack that no one could find. He attaches the explosives to the side of the platform and arms them. At this point, it is revealed that Carson, Stephanie, and the coroner in Berlin (Christian Berkel) are the antagonists and part of a conspiracy. Carson tells the captain that Kyle is a hijacker and is threatening to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the un-X-rayed casket unless the airline transfers $50,000,000 into a bank account. It is revealed that the conspirators killed Kyle's husband and abducted Julia in order to frame Kyle. Carson tells an unnerved Stephanie that he intends to blow up the aircraft's avionics section, killing the unconscious Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator in her hand.After making an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport in Goose Bay, Labrador, the passengers exit the aircraft as the tarmac is surrounded by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents (though the airport is properly Royal Canadian Mounted Police jurisdiction). As the captain is leaving, Kyle runs to speak to him with Carson in tow. The captain demands she give up her charade, revealing Carson's deception. Quickly playing the role of hijacker, Kyle demands that Carson stay on board and the crew disembark.As soon as the plane's door closes, Kyle knocks Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher, handcuffs him to a rail, and takes the detonator from his pocket. Stephanie comes out of hiding and Kyle screams "she's in avionics isn't she?" Carson quickly regains consciousness and fires at Kyle with a concealed gun, sending her running. He chases after Kyle shooting, until she locks herself in the cockpit. He reveals his conspiracy to talk her out. She opens a hatch door to the upper level and throws out a binder to fool him. Carson hears the upstairs thud and leaves. Kyle exits and encounters a guilt-ridden Stephanie slapping her palm with a large flashlight. Kyle talks her down and punches her out. Stephanie panics and flees the plane, abandoning Carson who looks on.Kyle during this time searches avionics and finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her how he gagged and dumped her daughter into the food bin. He disparages the people aboard who would never care enough to notice. Carson points his gun to where Julia lay before, but they're not there. He turns around and sees Kyle carrying Julia, escaping through a small door with the detonator in hand. Carson shoots at her as she closes the door. She detonates the explosives, killing Carson. The compartment she and Julia hid in was non-combustible, which keeps them safe. Kyle, carrying Julia, exits via a cargo door. Everyone watches in shock and amazement as Kyle carries her daughter out onto the tarmac.Later in the passenger waiting section of the airport, Marcus apologizes to a seated Kyle holding Julia in her arms. Stephanie is led away by FBI agents and more agents approach Kyle, asking her to identify the morgue director in Berlin who has been detained. She carries Julia still unconscious through the crowd of passengers, silently redeeming herself. One of the Arab passengers (Michael Irby) helps pick up her bag, a symbolic act of respect and forgiveness. Before loading her daughter into a van to take them away, Julia wakes up and sleepily asks "Are we there yet?" as they drive away.
In this movie appears Christian Berkel who will later play the role of Fritz Shimon Haber in Haber.

Tags: mystery, suspenseful, action, murder, flashback

Review:
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***This must be close to the plot synopsis:Man: "You know we're always saying we could use 50 million dollars?Woman: "Yes" Man: "Well I have a cunning plan." Woman: "What's that then?" Man: "First of all we need to find an aeronautics engineer working in a foreign country, with a child, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the layout of a particular long-haul plane." Woman: "Why's that?" Man: "Well then, you see, we murder her spouse, in such a way as it looks like an accident." Woman: "What for?" Man (exasperated): "Well then of course, we bribe the mortuary assistant at the hospital into letting us place explosives inside the casket." Woman: "But why?" Man: "I'm coming to that.
In Flightplan she goes one further  a mother who loses her daughter during a transatlantic flight and whom no-one (including, most of the time, the audience) believes.Aircraft engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is devastated by the sudden death of her husband.
Ably assisted by Sean Bean as the Captain, wanting to give her every benefit of doubt but increasingly forced to accept the evidence of his own eyes, and Air Marshall Peter Sarsgaard who plays an interesting yet inscrutable character, we are mesmerised by Kyle Pratt and our own difficulty in knowing whether to believe her.
Well, imagine being on a plane with your child when you awaken from a brief nap only to discover that your offspring is missing.To compound matters further, imagine that no one remembers seeing your child on board and all passenger lists and appropriate documentation lead to a conclusion that your child never set foot in the flying tube 30,000 feet above the Atlantic.That is the premise behind the new Jodie Foster (Nell) film Flightplan that delivers just enough thrills and spills to squeeze out a three star rating from his critic.Reprising the claustrophobic atmosphere of her last starring vehicle, Panic Room, Foster stars as Kyle, as recent widower that decides to take her 6-year-old daughter back to America from Berlin to escape the memories surrounding her husbands tragic suicide.However, after catching a little shuteye at the back of the plane, Kyle awakens to discover that her daughter is missing and that no one recalls ever seeing young Julia on board.Is she crazy?
The game, as we say, is afoot and Kyle, under the very watchful eye of Air Marshall Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) runs up and down the AIR E-474 jumbo jet in a frantic attempt to try and convince others that her daughter is on board and that conspirators are attempting to conceal her whereabouts for reasons unknown.This is the second thriller set aboard a jetliner in just two months  the other being Red Eye  and Flightplan does just as good a job of instilling fear and tension aboard a vessel where mobility, options and hiding places are limited between the nose and tail of the aircraft.
Peter Sarsgaard continues to put in one good performance after another and everyone from Sean Bean (who finally, FINALLY makes it to the end credits of a film without being killed!) to Erika Christensen (Traffic) are provided just enough screen time to advance the story without having anyone go over the top in an attempt to steal the spotlight.That's the good.
The bad includes a bad guy who has what I call the Bond-villain syndrome whereas he feels he has to talk out loud revealing more than anyone in the same situation would for the purposes of ensuring us dumb audiences know the who's how's and what's behind the plot, and an ending that is kinda bumpy landing after such a long flight.However, director Robert Schwentke does a good job of rising above most of the screenplay's shortfalls and delivers a Hitchcockian caper that is well worth the price of admission even if you will hardly remember most of the plot points by the time you see it on the DVD shelves early next year.www.gregsreviews.com.
It appears there's an agenda to mark "Flightplan" comments as not useful.Director Robert Schwentke working with Peter Dowling and Billy Ray's screen play, hasn't added much to the film in order to make it a thriller to be reckoned with, but, in general, the film is not a total waste, as seems to be the perception among contributors.In a way, "Flightplan" plays with the viewer's perception as to who is behind the disappearance of Julia, the six year old girl traveling with her mother, Kyle, to New York.
When I first saw the looks of this film, I was very intrigued and thought it was going to be a "The Forgotten 2"....i was very wrong.What starts off is with Jodie Foster playing a mourning mother after the death of her husband.
Her and her daughter catch a flight to go stay with Foster's grandparents, however, after Jodie's character falls asleep, the daughter is gone....and to make matters worst, she is told that she never existed...Sounds like a good premise eh?
Jodie's performance throughout is good, not Oscar worthy but it is one of the highlights of the film (as well as the ever-cool Sean Bean.) Unfortunately I can't go into great depth of anything else of the story because of spoilers, but I will say that the ending plot is horrible, totally impossible and so therefore ruins the impact of the film and its good beginning.There are also a lot of other things that annoy me about the film, to cut a long list short here are some examples: - a brilliant, new state of the art plane...and there's hardly anyone on board.Foster's character, although confused and frustrated does get annoying after a bit, and seeing as w're meant to identify and sympathise with her, is not a good thing.The overall twist / ending plot is ridiculous, as I stated before.My vote is 6/10....go see the film for the enjoyment of Jodie Foster and some thrills.
Hitchcock fans will be delighted to know that German director Robert Schwentke has made a movie with a story just about as good as some of Hitchcock's - one that keeps them on the edge of their seats, and seems to keep the guessing game going until the end.Jodie Foster (Panic Room) plays Kyle Pratt, an airplane designer whose husband apparently fell off their roof and died recently.
The entire crew and all the passengers seem to think so, particularly one man named Carson (Peter Sarsgaard, The Skeleton Key), who proceeds to ask all the hard questions that she doesn't want to hear.Even though 99% of the movie takes place on board an airplane, the film never ceases to entertain.
It also reminds us of how annoying airplane flights can be, with hyperactive kids acting up right in front of you, or snobby passengers who say things like, "It's not like she lost her Palm Pilot." By the middle of the film, most of the passengers are just as patronizing, as they clap when Kyle is escorted back to her seat after causing a stir.It has its share of unique cinematography, with obscure camera angles (like a sideways shot beneath an airplane landing), but other seemingly pointless slow-motion shots that don't add much to the scene.
The movie's plot is very simply Hitchcockian -- a woman, Jodie Foster, loses her little girl aboard an international flight several thousands of feet in the air, and nobody on board remembers seeing the little girl at all, much less her disappearance.
I haven't read every comment, so I don't know if others have mentioned these plot holes (in addition to the many many I have read), but: (a) how does Jodie Foster know what damage the explosion is going to do to the plane - it could have destroyed the whole thing, including her and her daughter; (b) how come no-one apparently noticed that the co-conspirator air hostess remained on board the plane at the end - surely there would have been a head count?
I have not seen that many Jodie Foster films, but being that she is a fairly well known actress and Flightplan's premise seemed as good as any's I gave it a shot when invited to an opening showing with two friends.What followed was a mixture between humor, failed tension, and borderline entertainment.Flightplan derives its plot from a Hitchcock standpoint: A woman (Foster) boards a plane with her daughter, falls asleep and discovers that the little girl is missing.
In a frenzy to locate her missing child she frightens both crew and passengers alike in a search that may be only in her mind.Trouble is Flightplan never builds much excitement, leaving the audience caught between wondering the truth behind the film's mystery and not really caring but hoping things get interesting before everything is over.Jodie Foster plays a good anxious, worried mother and I had the urge to just reach up, slap her and say "Cut that out!" A well done acting role on her part that sparks empathy and emotional responses from those watching, bravo.
A few predictable plot twists manage to change things up just enough to have it stand out much better than some suspense thrillers (The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman springs to mind.).Overall, Flightplan stands as an easily forgettable and average entry in the Jodie Foster film history.5/10.
Jodie Foster is terrific as usual playing recently-widowed aircraft engineer and mother of a solemn little girl who is faced with terror and dread while on a flight from Germany to New York: her daughter vanishes and no one on-board will admit to ever having seen her.
Ironically, the opening (with Foster making burial arrangements in regards to her husband, and later feeling watched from her apartment window) are spookily dream-like, but the director becomes much more sober once the action moves to the plane, and yet his film could really use more of that surreal, what's-going-on ambiance he initially captured so succinctly.
This was the point I felt it struggled but I always knew it was going to come and by showing its hand late in the game and playing to its strengths for the majority of the time I felt it just about pulled it off.Foster isn't that great here in terms of range but she does sell the wide-eyed panic she has to deliver and her performance helps the film build tension within the cabin while also sharing her doubts about herself with the audience.
And the film plays with racial profiling as if it were some ridiculous plot device, instead of a serious issue.Since we never get a chance to care for the little girl (or, indeed, feel sorry for her for having such a nut for a mother), we couldn't care less what becomes of her, or for her mother's frantic search for her.The solution to the mystery must've roused complaints from Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshalls (not to mention the flight attendants union).
The editing tries to create some sense of claustrophobia/paranoia but it fails at that and ends up making the film feel like some trashy B-movie thriller that does anything but thrill.
I don't want to trash this movie, or Jodie Foster for that matter, but this film was way below expectations as a "thriller".
Jodie Foster usually makes good choices for roles, but the whole "panic room, flight plan" type movies she needs to shy away from.
I didn't believe a moment of it from the start, worse the film spins out in such away that it gives you time to think about how things don't fit together.To top it all off Jody Foster's character and performance are completely unlikable from the start.
From beginning to end, it's an implausibility.In terms of acting, Jodie Foster has become annoying (in a Panic Room way) and the only actor worth his salt is Sean Bean.
STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits Following on from the earlier-released Red Eye, Jodie Foster takes the lead role after a long break since her last film The Altar Boys (last one I can remember anyway, which I don't even think was released over here?) in 2005's second 'in-flight' thriller movie Flight Plan, a movie with an intriguing premise that is actually a lot less intriguing if you think about it.She plays a woman who has recently lost her husband.
As the senselessness and the nightmarishness of the situation take her over, she begins to suspect something is not right and sets off on a desperate quest to discover what happened to her missing child.As I said above, this film is sort of competing with Wes Craven's Red Eye as 2005's best 'in-flight' thriller movie.
Flightplan is a deceptive thriller, not because of the plot itself, but what the filmmakers do with it, conveniently genre switching midway through a film, with the latter half looking, albeit, like your standard good-guy/bad-guy battle on an airplane, promising big effects and interesting moments despite the cliché, but actually becomes so abrupt that you're wishing that, close to the end when you're led to believe that all is resolved among the characters, that it would continue and bring you into yet another series of events.
And for that, Flightplan becomes instantly mediocre.Jodi Foster, in her usual threatened mom roles of recent, plays a grieving widow who is joined by her six-year-old daughter as they fly her husband's body to Long Island, their new residence.
In the post-9/11 days of airline paranoia, you can believe that this crazy lady in a desperate search for her kid, creating much calamity on the plane, would probably be more quickly restrained than she had been.But, what might be a tasty psychological thriller, soon turns into standard action fare as we learn that Foster and her daughter are indeed targets of some crafty thieves who intend to use her as their "crazy woman on board" scapegoat in order to carry out their plans to get some money.
It's like the script was written with Crayola on index notes to scatter in a recycle bin and salvage randomly to pick paper thin plot points and airtight thin character development to hand over to the group of highly intelligent chimpanzees to bang out the D-grade direct-to-video TV script on Final Draft computer.It astounds me that Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard and (he was awesome as a bad guy in Patriot Games) Sean Bean waste their talent on this POS.
Flightplan, however, pretend to be a serious thriller-drama movie that proceed to sink itself into morbid Hollywood fantasyland towards the end.That the hideous quality of this film show the crew -- including the hack committee-paid screenwriters, greedy credit-coveting producers and coke-dealer-for-hire director -- care far more about showing the pretentiously splendid visuals than send the draft back in for further revision to eliminate the ridiculous plot elements and up the dose of plausibility or it goes out to be thrown into the pile of bad scripts in the blue recycle bin.One of the worst films I've ever seen for such ludicrously unbelievable plot concepts that demand I leave my brain at the door.
Dowling and Billy Ray and directed by Robert Schwentke staring Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State) attempts to answer the movie's tagline using a little girl and an unbelievably large airplane.Kyle Pratt played by Foster is escorting her daughter Julia played by Marlene Lawston and her husband's coffin to New York from Berlin after he dies in an accident.
This is probably not what a director wants to hear about his movie, but 2005's Flight Plan is a nice, non-descript action flick that provides a compliment of suspense that exactly equals what you're hoping for in a non-threatening action movie.Putting the always lovely--and often sympathetic--Jodie Foster on a jetliner over the Atlantic, with a missing child and a plane-load of irritated passengers wanting her to sit down and shut up, is a pretty solid way to blow 100 minutes.
But I believe my favorite movie I have seen this year is Flightplan, which I just saw tonight.Jodie Foster plays a woman whose husband has just died.
No one saw the daughter board with Jodie Foster.And so it begins.You think that Jodie Foster really had a daughter, and then the movie leads you to believe that she was just imagining the daughter, and that she is on the verge of nervous breakdown pending the onsetting grief from the death of her husband.The remainder of the motion picture is dedicated to her search for the daughter, small glimmers of hope that she is not crazy (that her daughter might be real), the quenching of those glimmers, and her mental and emotional battle throughout the flight to maintain her sanity.Then, more begins to unfold on that airplane which transcends her search for a daughter (who may have never existed to begin with).Topnotch casting, expert cinematography, engaging scriptwriting, and intense musical scoring all combine to bring you one of the most impacting movies you have seen in a long, long time, a taut thriller which will leave you reverberating with its resounding echoes long after the final credits have rolled.Very emotionally satisfying - it will draw you closer to those whom you love, and remind you of what is really important..
Serious spoilers, don't read if you haven't seen the movie.Overall, the setup was a good time, and for the first half of the film I was entertained and vaguely hoping Jodie Foster would wind up frothing at the mouth in a straitjacket before the end.
Never Really Takes Off. Jodie Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a mother with a young daughter bringing her husband's body back to the States on a gigantic super-plane.
Jodie Foster is always great on screen, the trailer was effective and engaging, the supporting actors looked strong and Red Eye was a really good film so I was hoping to see another good thriller in the sky.
Flightplan follows a plane engineer (Jodie Foster) as her daughter goes missing on a flight.