Review of Flightplan (2005) by Kate M — 05 Feb 2016

This film is somewhere between the negative reviews and the glowing ones--a film with moments of gripping suspense and puzzling plot twists but also many moments of laughable action or failures of logic in the story.

Seeing Jodie Foster run in slow motion down the aisle of a large airline, intense to the point of bursting, is not one of those better moments, and the director doesn't have the decency to keep this to a one-time action sequence but gives it again.

Foster is a good enough actress but is too tightly wound in this one for my taste. Her young daughter is not just traumatized by recent events but comatose and completely unlikable in her performance--cute but devoid of energy.

A couple of other key characters are well-played within the limits of the script, particularly the plane's captain played by Sean Bean. The penultimate scene is fairly powerful in bringing the film's action to a crescendo, but too much of the movie's action is rather repetitive, though it's intended to build suspense.