RATING:

Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen and Sean Bean. Written by: Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray. Directed by: Robert Schwentke.

Rated PG-13 for violence and some intense plot material

Flightplan follows Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) as she boards an international flight with her daughter to bring the body of her deceased husband back to the states. At least we think she’s with her daughter. Awaking from a brief nap, Pratt discovers the child is gone. The best part of this film is watching Foster go from one emotional stage to the next during her plight. She starts off with reserved uneasiness, calmly beseeching the crew to help look for the missing girl. Their efforts prove fruitless and she rapidly switches to harrowing desperation, pleading with them to continue the search. When they try appeasing her by insisting her daughter will eventually turn up, Pratt, an aircraft engineer, demands to speak to the captain and impressively ticks off a number of little known crevices and compartments on the plane that can be checked. It’s fun watching the flight attendants’ jaws drop as a woman they believed to be an overreacting passenger proves to know more about their own plane than they do. Finally the bombshell. Checking the mandate for the people on board, Pratt is told that no record of her daughter joining the flight exists. Added to this, no one seems to remember seeing her with a child at all. Foster impressively tells the story of her internal struggle using only her eyes. She goes from indignant fury at the suggestion that she made the child up, to a silent fear when she entertains the idea that maybe the loss of her husband might have tampered with her sanity.

The press notes for Flightplan prides itself on being a contemplative psychological thriller using the claustrophobic atmosphere of an airliner to add to the film’s themes of fear and paranoia. Thanks to the talent of Foster, a woman who has been acting for, without exaggeration, four decades, the material is elevated and almost manages to achieve what it’s striving for. Unfortunately, as the truth is unraveled, the film forfeits its initial aspirations and begins treading territory that has been rehashed countless times. Aside from an interesting premise, it becomes nothing more than every other movie in its genre.

A lot of buzz is going on regarding Peter Sarsgaard. Personally, I’ve only seen him in Garden State but that’s my fault not his. Playing Air Marshal Gene Carson, he reveals himself when Foster’s character starts drawing attention from the other passengers. Up until that moment he was supposed to be undercover amongst the crowd as his job entails. Acting chops aside, Sarsgaard is interesting in the fact that his eyes are always half closed. Silently staring at Foster as she hysterically rants about her missing daughter, you can’t tell if he’s welling with sympathy for the distraught woman or nodding off in place. Still, the man exudes an inexplicable opaqueness that’s fascinating to watch. While this might not be his break out role, I look forward to seeing the other films he has coming out this season.

With the exception of the brief opening and closing sequences, the film takes place entirely on the fated E-474 Jumbo Jet, a fabricated commercial liner holding two stories connected by spiraling staircases. It also comes complete with spacious hallways and a personal video monitor on the back of most if not all of its impressive 700+ seats. In a business where every detail of a script is debated ad nausea, I couldn’t help thinking of the decision to use this extravagant set and asking why. Screenwriter Peter Dowling said he originally envisioned the story to take place on an ordinary commercial airliner. He believed the improbability of the daughter’s disappearance would be reinforced in such confined quarters and add weight to the notion of the mother’s potential insanity. I’m inclined to agree. Undoubtedly, one of the reasons the film’s producers opted for the larger-than-life fantasy jet was to make the idea of a little girl getting lost in it more plausible. For a thriller charged with the all too real emotions it does, however, the fictitious plane merely manages to distract the viewer.

Not many other actresses besides Foster could have pulled this film off. While an interesting setup, most of the questions the film answers only manages to raise more questions. Not in the satisfying, philosophical, art film sort of way. More in the scripting stage could’ve used a few more drafts sort of way. When all is said and done, you start scrolling through the scenes you just witnessed, scratching your head saying, “Wait, but didn‘t…” Flightplan should’ve taken a cue from The Forgotten, another film in recent memory where a mother’s forced to reexamine her sanity and memories of her progeny. Whenever that movie brought up a point that was hard to swallow, they just threw the old “It was evil aliens” excuse at you and thankfully moved on. With the possible exception of the illegal variety that might have been on board the E-474, Flightplan delivers no such light shedding aliens. Instead the filmmakers are going to have to dust off the all-purpose “It’s just a movie” and keep their fingers crossed.