Film: Flightplan

I had been looking forward to seeing Jodie Foster's latest film Flightplan for quite a while now. We have a lot in common Jodie and I, besides the obvious we actually share the same birthday.

Jodie plays Kyle, a mother taking her daughter home to the USA after the death of her husband in Germany. When she wakes up on the plane her daughter is missing and everybody denies seeing her. Did she actually board the plane or is this a figment of the grief-stricken Kyle's imagination, as therapist Greta Scacchi tries to make us believe? I probably wouldn't have recognised Greta if I hadn't noticed her name in the credits at the beginning (goodness I haven't seen her for years!)

A lot has been said about the improbability of the events in this film, both in reviews and on the IMDB message board, and I have to agree in some respects. Yes, it was highly improbable that none of the passengers remembered seeing the daughter either boarding the plane or before she disappeared, but that's my only gripe with the plot. The film works well and is rather reminiscent of Panic Room, which I do actually think is a better movie and people had plot grips with that too. I'm with Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3.5 stars; it was enjoyable, thrilling (especially in the last half an hour) and Jodie was excellent. She proves why she is one of the few female stars who can open a film. It was also good to see Sean Bean in a Hollywood movie not playing a baddie for once, as is usually the norm for him and other British actors.

The film is also rather topical as an air marshal shot and killed a passenger in Miami, who allegedly said he was carrying a bomb. When I heard about this I immediately thought of the shooting in London of Jean Charles de Menezez in July, a suspected suicide bomber who turned out to be innocent. However there are parallels with Flightplan as the evil air marshal was planning on killing passenger Kyle, once he had received the ransom money.

Rating: 7/10