“Flightplan” takes off smoothly. Starring Jodie Foster, it gains altitude as a moody psychological thriller before beginning to tilt into a last-act dive
that suggests just how much the tricks of action flicks have overtaken the more sophisticated requirements of suspense.
Jet propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt’s husband has died in a confounding accident. Now the bereft mother and her young daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are transporting his casket to the U.S.
Foster wears Kyle’s despair as a taut jaw and a faraway gaze. On the subway, at the mortuary, in the snowy courtyard of an apartment complex, Kyle’s affect remains muted.
The first indication Kyle might explode comes in a crowded airport. Why is it that when a child wanders off, the gale of a parent’s anger threatens to blow away the very person it’s there to protect?
“Flightplan” is loaded with foreshadowing moments like Kyle’s outburst. So many, in fact, it’s easy to think of it as the bread-crumb method of thriller construction.
Tidbits are tossed here and there to lead us toward or divert us from answers. Who, for instance, were those men across the courtyard staring into Kyle’s window the night before? They looked Middle Eastern. Why is her husband’s casket sealed with a computerized code? Why does daughter Julia’s grief take the form of not wanting to be seen?
Kyle’s brief visions of her husband at the outset of the film cloud matters from the get-go. Kyle’s flashbacks: Might they be delusions?
This is the central quandary of “Flightplan,” written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”). And it’s a fine one. What gets remembered and forgotten in the face of a profound loss? How does grief affect reality?
Airborne, those questions gain grander shadings. Like “Red Eye,” last month’s air-scare flick, “Flightplan” rides a jet stream of post 9/11 worries.
On a jet that resembles the Titanic with its hierarchy of posh and packed accommodations, Kyle and Julia take their seats amid other coach passengers.
On takeoff, the behemoth rattles as if it will shake apart. The jet has just been de-iced. But turbulence comes from a different mother’s nature.
After a nap, Kyle awakens to find Julia gone. Initially, she thinks she’s off playing or exploring. Soon, her reined-in frustration with the crew and her fellow passengers (none remembers Julia) gives way to panic, then lunatic determination.
Intimately familiar with the plane’s design, Kyle has the flight attendants (Erika Christensen, Kate Beahan) searching every corner. Sean Bean stands tall as the stern captain but empathetic parent.
On a plane where there are few allies, everyone becomes suspect. Once the crew confirms that Julia never boarded the plane, Kyle’s sanity becomes suspect, too.
Thank goodness there’s an air marshal onboard. Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) uses a number of methods to exert control over the increasingly hysterical Pratt. Some work, most let her tear down the aisles – too often in ridiculous slo-mo.
Foster’s return to a major motion picture’s manifest as a parent with a kid in danger has some calling this thriller “Panic Room at 37,000.”
It’s not. However, the class similaritaries between Foster’s character in David Fincher’s 2002 film and this one make them (ironically) less rich than others the two-time Oscar winner has inhabited.
Let’s face it, it’s not merely Kyle’s grief that makes her feel entitled to sprint the aisles, demanding a crew find a kid that nobody recalls seeing.
When Kyle reaches frantically into her pockets for Julia’s boarding pass and doesn’t find it, her life becomes anything but wonderful. It’s a life of loss, a world in which people are momentarily sympathetic before being disinterested, disbelieving, and increasingly hostile to your woes.
One wishes director Robert Schwentke and the screenwriters had done a more insightful job of playing communal terror off of Kyle’s righteous fear. That, after all, appeared to be one of their ambitions.
“Flightplan” teases us with ideas about security, parental love, racial profiling.
Too bad it arrives at a much more banal destination.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
**1/2 | “Flightplan”
PG-13 for violence and some intense plot material|1 hour, 28 minutes|THRILLER|Directed by Robert Schwentke; written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray; photography by Florian Ballhaus; starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Erika Christensen, Kate Beahan, Marlene Lawston|Opens today at area theaters.
