Stars: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Kate Beahan, Michael Irby, Assaf Cohen, Erika Christensen, Shane Edelman, Mary Gallagher, Haley Ramm, Forrest Landis

Director: Robert Schwentke

Summary: After 2002's PANIC ROOM, Jodie Foster took a three year break before deciding to take another leading role in a major motion picture. Three years is a lifetime in Hollywood, but Foster is one of the few stars who can afford to take such a lengthy hiatus from the industry and still command major roles on her return. Robert Schwentke's FLIGHTPLAN is the movie Foster chose as her comeback vehicle; playing the recently widowed Kyle Pratt, she sticks close to PANIC ROOM territory, delving further into fear and isolation as her character boards an airplane to escort her dead husband's body from Berlin to New York. Kyle brings her young daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) on the plane with her, and they fly on a craft that was designed by the grieving widow during her tragic tenure in Berlin. But after a short in-flight nap, Kyle awakes to find Julia has disappeared. Her frantic search leads nowhere, and it seems no one on the plane can remember Kyle's daughter boarding the plane. An air marshal named Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) and the pilot of the plane, Captain Rich (Sean Bean), methodically ask Kyle some questions to determine where Julia could be, but she fails to produce any concrete evidence, not even a boarding pass. At this point, Kyle begins to doubt her own sanity, and Schwentke steers the movie through some surprising plot twists as his lead character teeters on the brink of madness. The second half of the movie drops the Hitchcockian intrigue (FLIGHTPLAN owes a sizeable debt to Hitchcock's 1938 thriller THE LADY VANISHES) and settles into a more straightforward action film, but Foster shines throughout. Credit is also due to cinematographer Florian Ballhaus, who unnervingly conjures up a palpable feeling of claustrophobia as the high-tech airplane endures a rocky journey through the skies.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

If you can forgive plot holes that you could drive the airliner of your choice through the middle of, then Flightplanis an effective, pacey Hollywood thriller, that somehow manages to hold everything together in spite of its challenging plausibility.

Credit for that must go to its lead actress. In the hands of a lesser talent, this is just the kind of movie that could descend into obscurity. But Jodie Foster, as always, injects her character with a believability and a drive that's hard to resist, and here is no different.

The plot sees her flying her late husband's body back home on a commercial flight. As her and her six year old daughter settle down, Foster soon falls asleep, awaking to find no sign of her child, and no one who can even remember her being on the flight. Has someone taken her? Is it all in Foster's mind? These are the questions the film circles, and for a good hour of its running time, it's compelling Hollywood-style entertainment.

The cracks soon appear when you examine the film more closely though, and it's as if Flightplanis just as aware of that as everyone else. The decision therefore to keep the film moving at a good pace is a wise one, leaving the viewer free to switch their brain off and just enjoy the ride, without querying too much the glabrous script that rarely makes as good use of the premise as you'd hope.

Yet the film still works. It may, after the credits have rolled, have failed to live up to its potential, and there's a good hour of dissection waiting to happen afterwards. Yet, crucially, there's also the best part of a couple of hours of good, solid entertainment in it for you too.--Jon Foster

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Subtitles:	Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
Year:	2005
Release Date:	March 27, 2006
Runtime:	93 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B U X 0010201
Keywords:	Action, Flight, General, Plan, Thriller, Adventure, Flightplan
Genre:	Thriller