A grieving widow's daughter goes missing on an international
flight, but nobody remembers ever seeing her daughter on the plane. ACTION
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Flightplan (2005)Directed by Robert Schwentke
Written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray Starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Kate Beahan, Michael Irby, Erika Christensen, Marlene Lawston |
Flightplan is a very intriguing movie. Right off the bat, you've got Jodie Foster playing a bereaved, possibly unhinged mother on the hunt for her missing daughter. That's an attention grabber right there. Then you've got the layers of mystery surrounding the disappearance, mostly the fact that nobody on the plane will admit ever seeing the daughter. A lot of people had problems with the reveal. They said the villain's plan is too complicated, that the ending isn't satisfying enough. I didn't feel that because I was too busy enjoying Foster's great performance and trying to figure it all out for myself.
Kyle Pratt (Foster) boards an international flight with her daughter Julia (Lawston) and her husband's body in the cargo hold. Three hours into the trip, after waking from a nap, Kyle can't find her daughter. Weirder still, nobody on the plane remembers ever seeing her and she's not on the manifest. Even weirder so, there's no evidence she was ever on the plane. What follows is a tense mystery as Kyle becomes more and more unstable as the evidence starts pointing towards her own psychosis. In the end, of course she had a daughter and of course she was taken by a terrorist because of a very complex plot I won't lay out here. Sure, it's unnecessarily over the top, but it doesn't break the movie. Much like Julia Pratt, Flightplan has completely vanished from everyone's memory over the years. It's not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's a decent flick with a lot of interesting twists and turns. I guarantee you don't see the reveal coming the first time. Maybe the film loses punch upon a second viewing, but I wouldn't know. |