Flightplan - Austin American-Statesman movie review

'Flightplan' is taut thriller

By JOHN DeFORE
Austin American-Statesman

Jodie Foster doesn't act nearly as much as you'd imagine she could these days, so it's hard not to read a bit into the few parts she does accept. After her most recent starring turn in "Panic Room" and numerous related roles, she's starting to look like the self-crowned queen of the child-in-danger movie.

Touchstone Pictures

'Flight Plan'

3 out of 5 stars

Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen, Sean Bean, Haley Ramm
Run time: 93 minutes
Release date: Sept. 23, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for violence and some intense plot material.
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Foster is awfully convincing as the mother who will do anything to protect a child (or, as in "The Silence of the Lambs," a child-surrogate), projecting a naked, desperate determination. And "Flightplan" lets her take this mode in a new direction: As the trailers reveal, there comes a point in the tale where we learn that Foster might be trying to rescue a daughter who no longer exists.

The possibility that this mother is mentally disturbed is one of many plot elements that might or might not be a red herring in "Flightplan." Some of them prove more legitimate than others once the credits roll — closing one plot hole would have meant scrapping the movie — but all of them contribute to a nicely tense little suspense flick that, a terribly hackneyed ending aside, is a bit classier than it needed to be.

Foster plays an airline engineer flying on a plane she helped build, a gigantic luxury liner that would have made an ideal setting for a revival of the "Airport" franchise. (Not that that's a good idea.) Foster's husband just died, and she's bringing his body back to America from their adopted home in stark, wintry Germany.

When Foster wakes from a nap to find her daughter gone, the movie gets underway, progressing quickly from "excuse me, have you seen a little girl?" to controlled panic. Understandably terrified at the prospect of another loss, Foster is ill-equipped to tolerate the forced politeness with which flight attendants respond to her needs. Unfortunately for them, it isn't easy to placate a passenger who knows every single place a kidnapped child might be stowed, and insists they all be searched right now.

In this claustrophobic atmosphere, things escalate rapidly. Nearby passengers — the heavy-lidded and suspiciously attentive Peter Sarsgaard, a group of Arab passengers who become scapegoats for any disturbance — get involved in the commotion, as does the pilot. Foster starts to be seen as a threat herself, and in some ways actually becomes one, while the movie begs us to take sides. In the end, viewers might feel they could have worked things out a bit better, but isn't that usually the way with air travel?