message in the movies By Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

            
Flightplan  Rated PG-13
Directed by Robert Schwentke.  Starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgard

 

 Photo © Copyright Touchstone Pictures

Kyle (Foster) is a grieving widow who accompanies her young daughter on a flight home from Germany with a plane carrying the casket of her recently departed husband (who died from a fall off a rooftop).  Waking up from a brief nap, Kyle discovers that her daughter is missing.  As she inquires about the girl, everyone on the plane insists that they never saw a child.  Is Kyle delirious with grief and imagining a daughter that she never had?  And, if the girl is truly missing, can she be found?  Flightplan’s plot is reminiscent of the Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes and 1976’s Silver Streak (both set on locomotive rides) and has a cast of characters right out of similar airplane-based dramas.  Defenders of this film cite Foster’s impassioned performance as a super-mother (which we haven’t seen since – well, since Foster’s last film, 2002’s Panic Room).  To be fair, Foster is always watchable, but there is a point in the film where her character begins to put so many innocent people at risk for the sake of her child that I was rooting for security to come and get her.  As the mystery of the disappearing daughter becomes clearer, it also becomes more preposterous.  The first 30 minutes or so of Flightplan is so serious and somber; it’s hard to enjoy most of the humorous touches that eventually make their way onscreen.  Flightplan spends most of its time taxiing down the runway without ever really taking off.

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos. (This suspense film set on a jumbo jet is set on “Aw, come on!” autopilot.)    One pitchfork  (Violence.)

 

 

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