Flightplan

I’ve seen quite a few good thrillers recently, but sadly Flightplan wasn’t one of them. The 2005 thriller directed by German filmmaker Robert Schwentke falls short of the mark and unfolds one of the most ridiculously silly premises I’ve seen in recent memory. The film attempts, near the beginning, to invoke some Hitchcock-style as it encases its plot within the walls of a luxury jet and plays with notions of psychology and death. These plot foundations are abandoned, however, in favour of a standardized action-adventure ending and an “I was right all along” style conclusion. This denigrates Flightplan, unfortunately.

Flightplan is essentially a variation on the classic ideology of a “locked room mystery.” Basically, this refers to the notion that a crime has taken place under seemingly impossible circumstances. There has been some mastery in this genre, mostly in literature and in small doses on a television program. Episodes of Murder, She Wrote or CSI sometimes serve as good examples of the “locked room mystery.” One component of the genre is that the protagonist is often vilified for his or her point of view and is often seen as “crazy” for not seeing the “obvious” solution to the mystery. This adds elements of psychology to the mystery and creates, in theory, a more human story.

Jodie Foster stars in Flightplan as Kyle Pratt, a grieving woman coming to terms with the death of her husband. She boards a luxury jet with her daughter. Pratt’s daughter goes missing aboard the large plane and she begins searching for her, disrupting the flight. Pratt is soon told that her daughter was never aboard the plane and that her daughter’s name is not on the flight manifest, nor can any member of the crew remember seeing her. Pratt fights the notion of insanity and has to fight through her own doubts to find the truth. Without blowing the ending, the “truth” turns out to be so ridiculous and over-the-top that it presents an utterly laughable conclusion involving a conspiracy and a generalized bomb threat. It’s idiotic, really, and destroys any credibility that attaching Foster’s name to the film would have earned.

Much of the film appears to borrow heavy elements from 1938′s Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes, although the filmmakers deny this influence entirely. It’s too bad because Flightplan could have used the boost. Regardless of what the film borrowed from or didn’t borrow from, it’s a pretty ridiculous ride. The real problem here is the critical consensus that the film degrades itself and actually starts with such intellectual promise. It’s not a terrible film, in that regard, but it very quickly becomes one as a result of a standardized Die Hard on a plane style ending without any of the jovial prodding of the genre that made Snakes on a Plane such a ridiculously fun ride. Instead, Flightplan is so utterly ridiculous in its ultimate premise and takes itself so seriously that the only option is to laugh at the whole thing, despite the fact that Foster and the other actors are doing rather well.

Then there’s the whole idea of the two Arab passengers. Without getting into it too much, the use of Arab passengers as “red herrings” here is just appalling. Not only are they doubly represented as being both “heroes” and villains in no uncertain terms, but the skepticism with which they are filmed and the grossness of the plot hole they are involved with is so utterly trashy and ridiculous, especially given the global climate, that it ought to be very insulting. Not only is there the idea of the ridiculous “tackle” one of them delivers to Foster, but add to that the preposterous idea that they actually WERE looking through the window at Foster’s “daughter” and you’ve got a looming plot hole so big that the imaginary luxury liner could fly through it without much problem. Were the filmmakers going out of their way to be this ridiculous?

In the end, Flightplan is a film that embarrassingly tries to capitalize on post-9/11 worries, employs a ridiculous premise, and is also really rather bland. Foster is decent, so is the rest of the cast, but it’s really such a flimsy and crappy film that it’s hard to stomach. For someone who is said to be picky about scripts (Foster), one begins to wonder what went through her head when this one came across her desk. It’s trash.

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