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Foster adds star power to 'Flightplan'

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

From grief over the death of her husband to maternal safety concerns to stress from dealing with overly solicitous flight attendants, Jodie Foster gets quite an emotional workout in her new movie Flightplan. Both suspenseful and far-fetched, the flight is seldom smooth, but Foster's highly empathetic performance helps us glide over plot turbulence.

Touchstone Pictures

'Flight Plan'

B-

The verdict: A mile-high thriller, both suspenseful and far-fetched, with a high empathy performance by Foster.

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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She plays propulsion engineer and staunchly protective mom Kyle Pratt, unhinged by her husband's apparently accidental death from a rooftop fall just a week before. Yet she has walked with him since — at least in her mind — so when her 6-year-old daughter goes missing on a transatlantic flight, and everyone aboard insists she had no little girl with her, maybe Kyle has gone bonkers.

What, the woman who single-handedly brought down Hannibal Lecter? Don't you believe it. Besides that would make this tale even thinner than it is, so look for another answer to this post-9/11 version of a closed-room mystery.

Unlike the even more preposterous Red Eye, German director Robert Schwentke (The Family Jewels) takes us throughout the state-of-the-art airliner in Kyle's frantic search for little Julia (Marlene Lawston), practically a terrorist's crash course.

Peter Sarsgaard easily handles playing air marshal Gene Carson, but after Skeleton Key and Flightplan, he really needs to get back to something more worthy of his talents. The same goes for Foster, who lends the movie an air of intelligence, until called on to turn into a supermom action figure.