For its first hour or so, "Flightplan" has the pull of a first-rate mystery story, as a frantic mother searches for the six-year-old daughter who has inexplicably gone missing aboard a flight from Berlin to New York City. When none of the crew members and passengers can recall seeing the little girl, the question becomes (as in "The Forgotten"), whether the child is really missing or whether she is merely the figment of a mentally ill woman's delusional mind.
"Flightplan" provides heart-pounding suspense and even some genuine poignancy in its early stages, managing to turn the cramped confines of an overcrowded airplane into a stage for high drama. Jodie Foster plays yet another of her emotionally overwrought characters, but as few do it as well as she does, we feel we are in good hands on this flight. Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean also contribute mightily in their roles as the air marshal and the captain, respectively, whose job it is to try to ferret out the mystery without engendering panic and pandemonium among the understandably perturbed passengers. And the wonderful Gretta Scacchi illuminates the screen in her few brief moments as a sympathetic therapist called in to subdue the distraught woman.
However, like so many mystery stories, "Flightplan" is far more intriguing in its setting-up stages than it is in its resolution. For when the movie reaches that dreaded third act, the screenplay slithers to pieces in a welter of absurdities and action movie clichés, with implausibility and incoherence the order of the day. And although "Flightplan" doesn't go quite as agley as "Red Eye" does in its final moments, both films should have quit while they were ahead.
"Flightplan" provides heart-pounding suspense and even some genuine poignancy in its early stages, managing to turn the cramped confines of an overcrowded airplane into a stage for high drama. Jodie Foster plays yet another of her emotionally overwrought characters, but as few do it as well as she does, we feel we are in good hands on this flight. Peter Sarsgaard and Sean Bean also contribute mightily in their roles as the air marshal and the captain, respectively, whose job it is to try to ferret out the mystery without engendering panic and pandemonium among the understandably perturbed passengers. And the wonderful Gretta Scacchi illuminates the screen in her few brief moments as a sympathetic therapist called in to subdue the distraught woman.
However, like so many mystery stories, "Flightplan" is far more intriguing in its setting-up stages than it is in its resolution. For when the movie reaches that dreaded third act, the screenplay slithers to pieces in a welter of absurdities and action movie clichés, with implausibility and incoherence the order of the day. And although "Flightplan" doesn't go quite as agley as "Red Eye" does in its final moments, both films should have quit while they were ahead.