Flightplan

Action, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Jodie Foster	Kyle Pratt
Erika Christensen	Fiona
Sean Bean	Captain Rich
Peter Sarsgaard	Carson
Matthew Bomer	Eric
Kate Beahan	Stephanie
Amanda Brooks	Irene
Assaf Cohen	Ahmed
Shane Edelman	Mr. Loud
Stephanie Faracy	Anna
Jana Kolesarova	Claudia
Marlene Lawston	Julia
Greta Scacchi	Therapist
Michael Irby	Obaid

Director	Robert Schwentke; John Wheeler (XII)
Producer	Brian Glazer; Brian Grazer; Sarah Bowen; Robert DiNozzi
Writer	Billy Ray; Peter A. Dowling

Like a lot of stylishly persuasive thrillers, Flightplan is more fun to watch than it is to think about. There's much to admire in this hermetically sealed mystery, in which a propulsion engineer and grieving widow (Jodie Foster) takes her 6-year-old daughter (and a coffin containing her husband's body) on a transatlantic flight aboard a brand-new jumbo jet she helped design, and faces a mother's worst nightmare when her daughter (Marlene Lawston) goes missing. But how can that be? Is she delusional? Are the flight crew, the captain (Sean Bean) and a seemingly sympathetic sky marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) playing out some kind of conspiratorial abduction? In making his first English-language feature, German director Robert Schwentke milks the mother's dilemma for all it's worth, and Foster's intense yet subtly nuanced performance (which builds on a fair amount of post-9/11 paranoia) encompasses all the shifting emotions required to grab and hold your attention. Alas, this upgraded riff on Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (not to mention Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing) is ultimately too preposterous to hold itself together. Flightplan gives us a dazzling tour of the jumbo jet's high-tech innards, and its suspense is intelligently maintained all the way through to a cathartic conclusion, but the plot-heavy mechanics break down under scrutiny. Your best bet is to fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the thrills on a purely emotional level -- a strategy that worked equally well with Panic Room, Foster's previous thriller about a mother and daughter in peril. --Jeff Shannon