movie review flight plan

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How can a little girl simply disappear from an airplane at 37,000 feet? By asking this question and not cheating on the answer, "Flightplan" delivers a frightening thriller with an airtight plot. It's like a classic Locked Room Murder, in which the killer could not possibly enter or leave, but the victim is nevertheless dead. Such mysteries always have solutions, and so does "Flightplan," but not one you will easily anticipate. After the movie is over and you are on your way home, some questions may occur to you, but the film proceeds with implacable logic after establishing that the little girl does not seem to be on board.

The movie stars Jodie Foster in a story that bears similarities to her " Panic Room " (2002). In both films, a woman uses courage and intelligence to defend her child against enemies who hold all the cards. The problem she faces in "Flightplan" is more baffling: Who are her enemies? Why would they kidnap her daughter? How is it possible on an airplane?

For that matter, has it really happened? Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a jet propulsion engineer who has been employed in Germany on the design of the very airplane she is now using to cross the Atlantic. She is on a sad mission. Her husband, David, has died after falling -- she insists he fell and did not jump -- from a rooftop. The coffin is in the hold, and she is traveling with Julia ( Marlene Lawston ). She falls asleep, she wakes up, and Julia is gone.

Kyle methodically looks around the airplane, calm at first, then on the edge of panic. She tries to seem more rational than she feels, so the crew won't dismiss her as a madwoman. Certainly they're tempted, because the passenger list lacks Julia's name, the departure gate at Munich says she did not get on the plane, and her boarding pass and backpack are nowhere to be found. The captain is Sean Bean , very effective as a man who knows what his job is and how to do it. Peter Sarsgaard plays the in-flight air marshal, under the captain's orders. They receive a message from Munich informing them that Julia was killed along with her father. Obviously, the traumatized mother is fantasizing

And that's all you'll find out from me. There is no one else I want to mention, no other developments I want to discuss, no other questions I want to raise. If someone tries to tell you anything else about "Flightplan," walk away.

The movie's excellence comes from Foster's performance as a resourceful and brave woman; from Bean, Sarsgaard and the members of the cabin crew, all with varying degrees of doubt; from the screenplay by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray ; and from the direction by Robert Schwentke , a German whose first two films were not much seen in North America. This one will be.

I want to get back to the notion of the airtight plot. Often in thrillers we think of obvious questions that the characters should be asking, but do not, because then the problems would be solved and the movie would be over. In "Flightplan," Foster's character asks all the right questions, and plays the situation subtly and with cunning: She knows that once she crosses a line, she will no longer be able to help her daughter. There are times when she's ahead of the audience in her thinking, anticipating the next development, factoring it in.

As the situation develops, her response is flexible. Her tactics are improvised moment by moment, not out of some kind of frantic acting-out. Because she does what we would do, because she makes no obvious mistakes, because of the logic of everything the crew knows, she seems trapped. A passenger cannot disappear from an airplane, and Julia has disappeared, so either her mother is hallucinating, or something has happened that is apparently impossible.

Schwentke is limited, but not constrained, by the fact that most of his movie takes place on an airplane in mid-air. He uses every inch of the aircraft, and the plot depends on the mother's knowledge of its operation and construction. If she didn't know the plane better, really, than its pilots, her case would be hopeless. Even with her knowledge, she comes up against one bafflement after another. Should she doubt her sanity? Should we? We have, after all, seen Julia on the airplane. But for that matter, in two early scenes we saw, and she saw, her husband David, after he was dead. They spoke to one another. Didn't they?

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Flightplan (2005)

Rated PG-13 for violence and some intense plot

Marlene Lawston as Julia Pratt

Shane Edelman as Mr. Loud

Matthew Bomer as Eric

Sean Bean as Captain Rich

Mary Gallagher as Mrs. Loud

Jodie Foster as Kyle Pratt

Peter Sarsgaard as Gene Carson

• Peter A. Dowling

Directed by

• Robert Schwentke

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Common sense media reviewers.

Tense but riveting thriller, best for teens+.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Villains are tricky, authorities (the captain and

A father's suicide referenced at start; action

Brief flirtation between flight attendants.

Tense arguments. A few uses of "s--t" as

Some drinks discussed by flight attendants.

Parents need to know that the film's premise is a missing child, a timely topic but also potentially disturbing for younger viewers. The film focuses on the mother's panic when her 6-year-old daughter disappears midflight on an airbus, which offers up plenty of high-techy, brightly-lit space to be searched…

Positive Messages

Villains are tricky, authorities (the captain and flight attendants) are slow to pick up on villainy, and mother is admirably resolute throughout.

Violence & Scariness

A father's suicide referenced at start; action picks up later including physical fights and a bomb ticking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Tense arguments. A few uses of "s--t" as well as "hell" and "Goddamn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the film's premise is a missing child, a timely topic but also potentially disturbing for younger viewers. The film focuses on the mother's panic when her 6-year-old daughter disappears midflight on an airbus, which offers up plenty of high-techy, brightly-lit space to be searched. The mother displays tears, fear, and rage at the crew, who question her sanity. There is an apparent suicide (the film includes discussion of a fall off a rooftop, and some flashbacks/dreams of the victim's last night alive). The movie also features some violence, as the mother fights crew members and an air marshal, as well as threats of a hijacking and a bomb on the plane. Most important, parents should know that the tension is frequently very taut; be aware of what your child might tolerate and understand. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Joy ride for teens & adults!

A tense, riveting thriller..., what's the story.

Newly widowed Kyle (Jodie Foster) is transporting the body of her husband back to the States aboard a giant airbus that Kyle helped to design. With her is their daughter, six-year-old Julia (Marlene Lawson). Both fall asleep early in the flight. Kyle wakes up a couple of hours into the flight to find Julia missing. Though she tries to approach crew members and Captain Rich (Sean Bean) with respect, she's increasingly unnerved by their suggestions that she's worrying needlessly, and then that the girl doesn't exist. As the crew and passengers are increasingly turning against Kyle, she fights to find Julia.

Is It Any Good?

As suddenly widowed mother and propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt, Foster provides a broad range of emotion. Practical-minded and self-contained in her grief, Kyle first appears in middream, walking with her dead husband through Berlin's snowy streets, wishing that she might stop him from ascending to their rooftop -- from which he fell or jumped. While it provides an apt showcase for the brilliant Jodie Foster and delivers effective tension in its early scenes, by the end, FLIGHTPLAN dissolves into clichés. But there are enough thrills to keep teens and adults interested.

But the movie never veers from Kyle's perspective, which means viewers believe her and suspect a plot. This is especially true when Air Marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) comes up with some completely inappropriate niggling: "Your husband's death is starting to make a lot more sense to me -- a couple more hours and I'm ready to jump." Right. With outrageous motivation like that, you're ready for the silly plot turns that turn Kyle into Action Mom.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the portrayal of Kyle's evolving distress: how is she sympathetic in her fear and anger? How does her briefly sketched relationship with her daughter Julia help to establish this sympathy, even when everyone else on the plane thinks she's lost her mind? And how does the film use racial profiling of "Arab" passengers (in Kyle and other passengers' accusations)? Is this reasonable or unreasonable under these circumstances?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 23, 2005
• On DVD or streaming : January 24, 2006
• Cast : Jodie Foster , Peter Sarsgaard , Sean Bean
• Director : Robert Schwentke
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Buena Vista
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 93 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence and some intense plot material
• Last updated : December 2, 2022

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Flightplan Reviews

Fans of action flicks will lap this up, but for those expecting an adult thriller, the 11th-hour diversion into unexpected territory is unwelcome turbulence, marring what, up until then, had been a slick, smooth and extremely enjoyable ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 25, 2021

Has there been an abduction, or is this a figment of a rattled mind? Nothing becomes clear until late in the film, by which time you should be fully gripped by this bizarre mystery.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 20, 2020

Sets up its premise quickly, then simply has nowhere to go.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 5, 2019

The alternations between reality and illusion could have been intriguing but the filmmaker doesn't want to go on that track at all.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 9, 2019

It's always a bad sign in a thriller when the big reveal is greeted by hoots of derisive laughter.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Sep 1, 2011

As with many modern thrillers the actual plot, once it comes to light, is highly implausible, there are a few too many turns towards the end and the climax errs towards the anti-climatic. That being said, it's well put together and entertainingly moody.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 22, 2011

Tense but riveting thriller, best for teens+.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 15, 2010

If it's post 9/11, why would they have a plane with bathrooms that lead to tunnel-sized ventilators that have access to the plane's machinery?!

Full Review | Apr 29, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 14, 2007

a white-knuckle ride into the anxieties and terrors of the new millennium... Fasten your seatbelts.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2007

Following a smooth takeoff, this psychological thriller hits some turbulence and crash lands due to a preposterous, almost comical, turn of events.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 26, 2007

Foster is a master at portraying a woman in terror who's trying to balance her fears with a survival instinct that drives her to somehow prevail.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 15, 2007

full review in Greek

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Oct 3, 2006

While I do think that Foster and the movies she makes need to lighten up, that isn't quite what I have in mind.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 22, 2006

The bickering back and forth between Foster and Sarsgaard becomes tiresome. And the erriness dissipates without anything as interesting to replace it.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 31, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | May 12, 2006

A disposable B-movie without much excitement or ingenuity.

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 4, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

It's not a good movie despite its stylishness and performances, but it does have a short window of appeal for reasons entirely independent of its plausibility.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 28, 2006

Jodie Foster, the real-life mother of two young sons, follows 'Panic Room' with another thriller that allows her to physicalize her maternal instincts into action-movie heroics. (Does her experience as a child actor help explain this protective streak?)

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 19, 2006

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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Jodie Foster as Kyle Pratt; Sean Bean as Captain Rich; Erika Christensen as Fiona; Peter Sarsgaard as Gene Carson; Assaf Cohen as Ahmed; Kate Beahan as Stephanie

Home Release Date

• Robert Schwentke

Distributor

• Touchstone Pictures

Movie Review

Grieving widow Kyle Pratt, a propulsion engineer whose husband has just died tragically during their trip to Germany, is a prime candidate for a nervous breakdown. She’s headed back to the States—his coffin in tow—aboard a multilevel jumbo jet that she helped design. Her somber 6-year-old daughter, Julia, provides a much-needed distraction. But after napping aboard the enormous plane, Kyle awakens to find Julia missing.

Desperate to retrieve her little girl, she goes from worried to frantic to dangerously disruptive. The flight crew’s patience wears thin, especially because no other passengers recall ever seeing Julia, and the manifest shows no evidence that the girl was ever onboard. Has Kyle lost her daughter … or her mind? Is evil afoot or has recent trauma caused her psyche to play tricks on her? Whatever the case, it becomes obvious to this bereaved woman that finding answers at 37,000 feet is entirely up to her, and will require desperate action.

Positive Elements

Kyle’s maternal instinct causes her to search tirelessly for her missing child. She is so convinced that Julia is real and in trouble that she endures public scorn and potential arrest to find her. At times, passengers and airline employees are compassionate and helpful, both to Kyle and to one another. Captain Rich tries to be patient and sympathetic toward Kyle, yet remains professionally committed to the safety of everyone on his flight.

Sexual Content

There are implied shenanigans between a male and female flight attendant who steal away to a secluded compartment.

Violent Content

[ Spoiler Warning ] Scuffles break out among passengers. Convinced that an Arab man is involved in her daughter’s disappearance, Kyle lunges at him, knocking him and a flight attendant to the floor. A blow sends Kyle sailing into an armrest, leaving her unconscious. She smashes the windshield of a car in the hold and strikes a man on the head with a fire extinguisher. A woman gets punched in the face. There’s gunfire, and a character perishes in an explosion.

Crude or Profane Language

A dozen profanities include several s-words and abuses of God’s name (“g–d–n,” “Jesus,” “Christ”).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Kyle admits to being on the prescription drug Klonopin for anxiety and indicates that it’s commonplace for people to take sleeping pills when flying.

Other Negative Elements

Snide, disrespectful comments devalue children or show contempt for airline clientele. (A veteran flight attendant tells a rookie, “It’s OK to hate the passengers.”) Noble intentions notwithstanding, a desperate Kyle generates widespread panic in the cabin simply to create a diversion.

“This story was an opportunity for me to make a puzzle movie full of twists and turns that is also extremely emotional,” says director Robert Schwentke, a German indie-filmmaker turning in his Hollywood debut. “I liked the idea of a movie that largely unfolds in a single contained environment. We decided against cutting to the control tower or to any characters on the ground. Everything stays within the claustrophobic space of the plane, trapping the audience along with the characters, leaving them both struggling to solve the mystery.”

I have to admit, his Hitchcockian thriller played me like a Stradivarius.

From takeoff I chose not to follow Flightplan on its most obvious trajectory. I went into it looking for a duplicitous twist. Little clues seemed to confirm that my backdoor sleuthing was leading in the right direction. Then, when chilling revelations were revealed, it was just as I had calculated. Ha! Gotcha! I’d predicted it exactly . But my smug satisfaction didn’t last. I looked at my watch and realized only 50 minutes had passed. There was too much of the film left for this to be the last word. “Ha! Gotcha!” Schwentke laughed back, though not disrespectfully. He and his team actually anticipated how we might craftily deconstruct their plot engine, realizing that we’ve been on similar flights before.

Add emotion to the mix and the result is more than satisfying. Explains executive producer Robert DiNozzi, “The thought of your child disappearing, and then being thrust into a situation where no one believes you, no one can help you and you have no idea who to trust, or if you can even trust your own sanity, has a strong emotional pull.” The filmmakers are brilliant at walking that tightrope. At least one of them has had practice: DiNozzi’s producing partner here is Brian Grazer, who won an Oscar for his reality-bending drama A Beautiful Mind .

I won’t give away the is-she-or-isn’t-she-losing-it conceit. And I’ll resist the temptation to expose a rather gaping hole in the plot’s foundation. (The screenwriters labored to cover their tracks, but there’s a huge head-scratcher in hindsight.) The fact is, Flightplan is a wild, escapist ride that challenges all sorts of assumptions and gives us the most tenaciously maternal character since Lt. Ripley protected Newt from slithery, slimy Aliens . This film benefits from shrewd casting, taut direction by Schwentke and another fine performance by Jodi Foster. If not for dicey language as unappealing as airline food, this would be a great popcorn flick for mature teens and adults.

Bob Smithouser

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Where to Watch

Jodie Foster (Kyle Pratt) Peter Sarsgaard (Carson) Sean Bean (Captain Rich) Kate Beahan (Stephanie) Michael Irby (Obaid) Assaf Cohen (Ahmed) Erika Christensen (Fiona) Shane Edelman (Mr. Loud) Mary Gallagher (Mrs. Loud) Haley Ramm (Brittany Loud)

Robert Schwentke

A bereaved woman and her daughter are flying home from Berlin to America. At 30,000 feet, the child vanishes, and nobody will admit she was ever on the plane.

Recommendations

More about Flightplan

The " Die Hard on an airplane" concept has been tried several times before, from Passenger 57 to the recent Red Eye , …

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Flightplan Review

25 Nov 2005

It is perhaps surprising that Hollywood has taken four years since 9/11 to make aircraft interiors the suspense locale du jour. Sandwiched between Red Eye and the upcoming Snakes On A Plane, Flightplan adds Hitchcockian enigma — think a mid-air The Lady Vanishes — to the already heightened fears surrounding aircraft travel and delivers an entertaining diversion that fails to stand up to closer scrutiny.

For an hour or so, this is all suspenseful fun. The premise — how can a mother lose a daughter in such a confined space? — is crackerjack and the screenplay has the confidence to wring it out in a patient build, finding conflict amid the claustrophobia. There are obvious red herrings (a run-in with an Arab passenger raises the spectre of terrorism) and diversions (Greta Scacchi pops up as a therapist who counsels Kyle), while the tension between the growing anger of the passengers and the staff’s attempts to keep Kyle calm is tangibly evoked. Schwentke’s camera glides between business class, cattle class and the aircraft’s bowels, dynamising the space while filling the cabin with dread. Starting the movie a sallow presence, Foster grows in stature, her escalating anxiety and anger shot through with trademark steely determination.

Around Foster, the supporting cast put in solid spadework; Peter Sarsgaard makes for a genial, sympathetic air marshall, Sean Bean is professional and stoic as the pilot, Kate Beahan perhaps overplays her card as a worldweary air stewardess, while Erika Christensen is wasted as a newbie trolley-dolly.

It’s only when the story has to unravel itself and solve its mystery that the turbulence kicks in. The set-up is so meticulously constructed and airtight that the writing paints itself into a corner and the final third neither has the big suckerpunch or storytelling grace to deliver a satisfying resolution. Still, part of the fun here is trying to anticipate how it will all work out, then pulling it to pieces in the pub afterwards. Flightplan may have more holes than a slab of Emmental but it doesn’t really matter. The compelling first half and Foster’s gravitas are enough to make the journey worthwhile.

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Search Reeling Reviews

A mother and daughter board a plane for a long, sad journey from Berlin to New York after the accidental death of their husband/father. Kyle (Jody Foster) and Julia (Marlene Lawston) nap during the flight but when the mother wakes, the child is gone. Frantically, she calls upon the flight crew to find the girl and the plane is searched from nose to tail. The only problem is, no one remembers the little girl boarding with her mother in “Flightplan.”

Laura's Review: DNS

Robin's review: c.

German director Robert Schwentke has created a taut, suspenseful psychological drama…for the film’s first hour. Then, “Flightplan” deflates like a punctured blimp into a routine and silly action thriller that has plot holes that the story’s jumbo jet could fly through. We first meet Kyle Pratt as she sits at a Berlin subway stop. The anguished look upon her face is there for a reason – she is on her way to the city morgue to retrieve the body of her husband, killed in an accidental fall, to be delivered to New York. Now, she must pack up their belongings and, with six-year old Julia, return home to bury her spouse. The dreadful accident has traumatized Julia and Kyle promises to hide the little girl under her coat all the way home if she wants. The pair are the first to board the plane, an A474, the largest passenger plane in the world that Kyle helped design, and they settle in as hundreds of other passengers bustle about. The two are in their own world as the grief they share washes over them as they prepare for the long trip home. On a whim, Kyle suggests that they take over a couple of vacant rows in the back of the plane so they can nap. The mother awakens a few hours later only to discover that Julia is missing. Frantic, she begins to search everywhere but the little girl is nowhere to be found. The tension builds very well for the film’s first hour as Kyle, the propulsion engineer involved in the jumbo jet’s engine design, drives the flight crew to help and searches the plane with a steadily building fear that Julia was taken from her. The crew, led by its pilot, Captain Rich (Sean Bean), is sympathetic at first and help Kyle with her hunt for the child. But, they soon learn that there is no record of the six-year old having boarded the plane and she is not on the passenger manifest. It doesn’t help matters that none of the crew or other passengers remembers seeing the girl with her mother. This portion of “Flightplan” actually keeps you on the edge of your seat. You know that Kyle has suffered a deep trauma with the loss of her husband and you start to wonder if Kyle, who is taking anti-anxiety drugs, is delusional and imagining Julia. Evidence piles up to confirm this theory but Kyle steadfastly insists that she is not crazy and her daughter was really taken by somebody. In typical post-9/11 fashion, a maguffin is put forth involving a group of obviously Arab men who act suspiciously shifty, fortifying Kyle’s belief of abduction. As this plot thickened, I wondered just where the heck the filmmakers, with the story by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray, were going to go. Would we see Kyle sink deeper and deeper into psychosis? Would her fears be founded? Schwentke and company does a decent job of keeping you guessing. Then the bubble bursts and the real plot unfolds. I’m not going to go any further with this since it would give away what should be, but isn’t, a thrilling thriller. The last half hour of Flightplan,” though, does not come close to meeting the tension and suspense so carefully built up in the beginning. At an 88-minute runtime, the thriller is too long. It is unfortunate that the expectations so well set up in “Flightplan” are unmet. This is a first class film, technically, with an incredible production design, by Alexander Hammond, that creates a world within a world aboard the mythical A474. The airplane is so huge, with its multi-levels and numerous nooks and crannies, it is believable that Julia could be lost or spirited away. The enormous vessel is a character unto itself in the film. Mega-star Jodie Foster is a terrific actress and expertly conveys the fear and anxiety when her daughter turns up missing. Cinematographer Florian Ballhaus captures this in frequently used extreme close-up of the actress’s anguished and angry face as Kyle goes about her frantic investigation. It is too bad that the story fails to come up to the level of Foster’s acting ability. The supporting cast does a yeoman’s job with Peter Saarsgard as Air Marshal Gene Carson, the man who tries to help Kyle but is concerned with the aircraft’s security. His character goes deeper than this and, conversely, more shallow, too. Sean Bean, a busy actor this year with roles in “The Island” and the upcoming “North Country” and “Silent Hill” is convincing as the ship’s captain who is both sympathetic and suspicious to the frantic mother’s plight. Erika Christensen (you’ll remember as Michael Douglas’s problem daughter in “Traffic”) is all grown up as empathetic flight attendant, Fiona. Australian actress Kate Beahan is initially effective as chief flight attendant Stephanie but is hung out to dry with the film’s silly climax. The trailer for “Flightplan” does a solid job of building up the story’s suspense and does not give the climax away, an unusual thing in the typical Hollywood marketing machine. If the film had met the expectations so well laid down by the advertising campaign, we would have a top-notch thriller on our hands. But, the ball was dropped and “Flightplan” should have taken a different course.

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"Veering Off Course"

What You Need To Know:

(Pa, LL, V, A, DD, M) Light pagan worldview about a woman searching for her lost child in-flight, including woman prays to her dead husband for help; nine light obscenities, one profanity and three blasphemies or strong profanities; violence includes fighting, explosion, shootings, woman hits her head in slow motion, man hit in face with fire extinguisher, and man cuts himself on broken glass; no sexual content or nudity; some drinking and smoking, and woman takes prescription medication; and, grieving, loss, extortion, and deception.

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FLIGHTPLAN stars Jodie Foster as a grieving woman whose daughter vanishes on an in-flight jumbo jet. Did someone abduct her 6-year old, Julia, or did the child wander to a lower deck on this multi-level aircraft? Propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt (Foster) is convinced her daughter is in jeopardy and, as a panicky but intelligent mother, quickly becomes a threat to the safety of the entire flight.

Flight Captain Rich (Sean Bean) is professionally helpful but increasingly concerned about the welfare of his other 425 passengers. He asks Air Marshall Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) to keep watch over the agitated Kyle and, if necessary, to restrain her from posing a danger to the others. Captain Rich is sympathetic but not convinced Kyle’s daughter is even on the flight. Oddly enough, her name does not appear on any passenger manifest.

Kyle, meanwhile, becomes suspicious of some Middle-Eastern travelers and physically attacks one of the men. Carson manages to calm her and repeatedly poses the most important question: Why? Why would someone take her daughter? Is this somehow related to her husband’s recent death? And, who is really in the casket in the craft’s cargo hold?

FLIGHTPLAN is billed as a “mother’s flight into the heart of fear.” Of course, the disappearance of a child easily ranks way up on the anxiety scale, but how can filmmakers sustain that kind of intensity without wearing out the audience’s patience? Two-time Academy Award® winner Jodie Foster seems qualified to bring credibility to this role, but, ultimately, the script just fails to keep the whole thing in the air.

Following up her previous maternal spin in the far better thriller, PANIC ROOM, Foster does what she can here but the implausibilities stack up. That hissing sound is not the fuselage losing cabin pressure, it’s a worn-out audience tired of suspending disbelief at every turn. The actors are on the screen giving their all, but FLIGHTPLAN’s inexperienced writers and director cannot keep the plot from hitting major turbulence.

Playing on the public’s post-9/11 fears and, at times, showing the uglier side of the “crowd mentality,” FLIGHTPLAN takes the path of least resistance. Vindication comes so cheaply, the audience can’t help but feel and resent the emotional manipulation. FLIGHTPLAN doesn’t have much of a worldview. The only possible religious element is when the heroine prays to her dead husband for help. The movie also includes some light obscenities, a few profanities and light violence.

Don’t let the in-flight treats fool you. FLIGHTPLAN veers off course in its final approach, and the audience – expecting a first-class meal – is served peanuts.

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Flightplan (United States, 2005)

Flightplan is the latest motion picture to take an intriguing premise and flush it into the septic tank. Despite the participation of selective, talented actress Jodie Foster and a screenplay that borrows heavily from The Lady Vanishes , Flightplan can't avoid falling apart during its final half-hour. Instead of an intelligent, inventive finale, we are stuck with the same approach employed by every half-baked thriller. The absurd conclusion would be laughable if it wasn't such a disappointment. And anyone mentioning the words "surprise twist" in association with this film is betraying an ignorance of the conventions of the genre.

Foster plays Kyle, a propulsion engineer who, with her young daughter, Julia (Marlene Lawston), in tow, is traveling from Berlin to New York to bury her dead husband. Their airplane is a state-of-the-art skyliner. Kyle knows it well, since she helped design it. Shortly after takeoff, she drifts into a deep sleep. When she awakens three hours later, with the plane over the Atlantic Ocean, Julia is missing. Kyle begins searching - calmly at first, then with increasing anxiety when she can't find her daughter. She enlists the aid of a sky martial, Carson (Peter Saarsgard), several members of the flight crew, and the captain (Sean Bean) - all to no avail. No one remembers seeing Julia, and there is a growing suspicion that the girl's presence on the flight is a figure of the mother's imagination.

That's the interesting part of Flightplan . It's what they show in the previews and commercials to get you into a theater. Kyle, unhinged by the loss of her daughter, races up and down aisles, escapes through a ceiling tile in the bathroom, and tries to break into the cockpit. What the film keeps hidden are the events that occur during the awful final act, when logic is thrown out the hatch. Once you start putting the pieces together, it's easy to see where the movie is going. We have seen this kind of story before, although admittedly not on an airplane. By comparison, Red Eye (also about terror at 30,000 feet) was a masterpiece of plotting.

Most thrillers diverge from reality at some point. That's when the skill of the director comes into play. One could argue, for example, that Die Hard is no less preposterous than Flightplan . But John McTiernan, who helmed the Bruce Willis action movie, undersood what it takes to keep the audience's disbelief suspended. The same is not true of Flightplan 's director, Robert Schwentke. The moment plot elements start going over the top, he loses the audience. Alfred Hitchcock used the term "refrigerator movie" to describe a film with absurd plot twists that are recognized by a viewer only in retrospect - later in the evening, while getting a late-night snack out of the refrigerator. Unfortunately, with Flightplan , the holes become apparent as soon as they develop. Instead of being plugged, they grow larger and more obvious.

At least there's some solid acting. Foster is convincing as the desperate mother, and she plays some scenes so close to the edge that we wonder if Kyle is delusional. Sean Bean, who often plays villains, is effective as the captain with a dilemma to resolve. Next time I fly, I want a captain with this kind of in-control presence. Peter Sarsgaard, one of today's better young character actors, is wasted in the thankless role of the air marshal. For much of the film, all he does is shadow Foster and look sulky.

Flightplan has a strong Hitchcock connection. In particular, it borrows from The Lady Vanishes . The premise is similar, but that's not where the pilfering stops. Screenwriters Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray also use the unwitting "message on the window" and the hysteria of the female protagonist. It's when Flightplan goes beyond Hitchcock and The Lady Vanishes that it runs into problems. The "new" material added to the film isn't as compelling as the "updated" stuff. Too facilitate the conventional ending, many intriguing possibilities are left unexplored. The trajectory of Flightplan resembles that of a plane on a troubled flight: at the beginning, it soars, then it levels off before going into a tailspin from which it never recovers.

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• A bereaved woman and her daughter are flying home from Berlin to America. At 30,000 feet, the child vanishes, and nobody will admit she was ever on the plane.
• The husband of aviation engineer Kyle Pratt has just died in Berlin, and now she is flying back to New York with his coffin and their six-year-old daughter Julia. Three hours into the flight Kyle awakens to find that Julia is gone. It's a big double-decker plane, so the very concerned mother has a lot of territory to cover in order to find her daughter. She takes matters into her own hands as she fights to discern the truth. — Anthony Pereyra {[email protected]}
• Berlin-based David Pratt has just died from a fall off his apartment building's roof; it's unclear whether his death was accidental or a suicide. His wife, aircraft-propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt, and their 6-year-old daughter Julia Pratt are in emotional turmoil as they fly his body back from Berlin to New York for the burial. Aboard the Alto Airlines jumbo-jet flight, Julia goes missing while Kyle naps. Julia has a tendency to wander off so at first Kyle thinks this is just another instance and she'll be found easily, but she is proven wrong, and nobody remember ever seeing young Julia Pratt on board, including the flight attendants. As they look for her, the entire flight crew and Kyle learn that there is no record of her ever having been on board - no boarding pass, no name on the official manifest, and no extra person on the official head count conducted by the flight attendant prior to the supposed disappearance. Further information from Berlin comes to light: that Julia could never have been on board. Kyle is certain that someone on board has taken her and that someone with the airline who could alter official flight records is also involved in her disappearance. Kyle's increasing rantings put her at direct odds with the inconvenienced passengers, the flight attendants (who previously admitted that they have their favorite and not-so-favorite passengers, and now Kyle is in the latter category), and, most specifically, Captain Rich and Sky Marshal Carson, whose foremost goal is the safety of all passengers. With a detailed knowledge of aircraft design, Kyle believes she has an upper hand in finding Julia if only someone would believe her and let her search. Or is the trauma from David's death playing games with her mind so that she's searching for someone who no longer exists....or ever did? — Huggo
• A grieving mother (Kyle) and daughter (Julia) are flying in a plane she helped create, from Berlin to New York with the daughter's very recently-deceased father in a casket below deck. Kyle awakens from a nap and Julia has vanished. The passengers and flight crew don't recall her boarding the plane. Will Kyle find her daughter or will she start to accept the truth? — pinkustink12
• Kyle has just gone through the trauma of losing her husband who jumped off the roof of their apartment building in Berlin. Now she and her 6-year-old daughter Julia are flying his casket back to the United States on a plane she helped design. About 3 hours into the flight, Kyle wakes up from a nap to find Julia missing, and no one remembers ever seeing her. The flight crew begin to search the plane until the Captain comes back with information that when her husband jumped, he took Julia with him. As Kyle fights to discern the truth, she takes matters into her own hands. — The M Continuum
• Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a propulsion engineer based in Berlin, Germany. Her husband David (John Benjamin Hickey) died from falling off the roof of an avionic manufacturing building, and now Kyle and her six year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are flying home to Long Island to bury him and stay with Kyle's parents. They fly aboard a passenger aircraft, an Elgin 474, which Kyle helped design. After falling asleep for a few hours, Kyle wakes to find that Julia is missing. After trying to remain calm at first, she begins to panic, and Captain Marcus Rich (Sean Bean) is forced to conduct a search. Kyle walks the aisles, questioning people, but none of her fellow passengers remember having seen her daughter. One of the flight attendants calls in to the airport they just departed from and, shockingly, the gate attendant says that they have no record of Julia boarding the flight. In addition, according to the passenger manifest, Julia's seat is registered empty. When Kyle checks for Julia's boarding pass, it is missing. Marcus refuses to allow the cargo hold to be searched because the searchers could be hurt if the plane shifted due to turbulence. Both Marcus and the other crew members suspect that Kyle has become unhinged by her husband's recent death, and has imagined bringing her daughter aboard. One flight attendant Stephanie (Kate Beahan) is exceptionally unsympathetic. Faced with the crew's increasing skepticism regarding her daughter's existence, Kyle becomes more and more desperate. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) is ordered by Marcus to guard and handcuff her. Later on, Marcus receives a wire from the hospital in Berlin. It says that Julia was with her father when he fell off the roof, and she also died of internal injuries. Kyle furiously denies that, consistently claiming that she brought Julia aboard. The crew now believes she is delusional and she is brought back to her seat by Air Marshal Carson. A therapist (Greta Scacchi) on board tries to console her, causing Kyle for a moment to doubt her own sanity until she notices that a heart Julia had drawn earlier on the window next to her seat is real. Kyle is emboldened and convinces the therapist to let her use the bathroom. With her handcuffs now removed, she climbs into the upper compartment and sabotages the aircraft's electronics, deploying the oxygen masks and interrupting lighting. Some passengers brawl with the red herring Arab passengers on board. She uses the chaos to take an elevator to the lower freight deck. She desperately searches for Julia and finally opens her husband's casket to which she emotionally breaks down. Carson finds her and escorts her back. Kyle makes a final plea to Carson that she needs to search the plane upon landing. Carson considers for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain," against flight attendant Stephanie's command (they are landing), leaving the audience to momentarily believe he is sympathetic. Instead, he sneaks back into the freight deck to remove two small explosives and a detonator concealed in David's casket. He then climbs down to a part of the avionics section, revealing Julia is sleeping (presumably drugged) with her coat and backpack that no one could find. He attaches the explosives to the side of the platform and arms them. At this point, it is revealed that Carson, Stephanie, and the coroner in Berlin (Christian Berkel) are the antagonists and part of a conspiracy. Carson tells the captain that Kyle is a hijacker and is threatening to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the un-X-rayed casket unless the airline transfers $50,000,000 into a bank account. It is revealed that the conspirators killed Kyle's husband and abducted Julia in order to frame Kyle. Carson tells an unnerved Stephanie that he intends to blow up the aircraft's avionics section, killing the unconscious Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator in her hand. After making an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport in Goose Bay, Labrador, the passengers exit the aircraft as the tarmac is surrounded by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents (though the airport is properly Royal Canadian Mounted Police jurisdiction). As the captain is leaving, Kyle runs to speak to him with Carson in tow. The captain demands she give up her charade, revealing Carson's deception. Quickly playing the role of hijacker, Kyle demands that Carson stay on board and the crew disembark. As soon as the plane's door closes, Kyle knocks Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher, handcuffs him to a rail, and takes the detonator from his pocket. Stephanie comes out of hiding and Kyle screams "she's in avionics isn't she?" Carson quickly regains consciousness and fires at Kyle with a concealed gun, sending her running. He chases after Kyle shooting, until she locks herself in the cockpit. He reveals his conspiracy to talk her out. She opens a hatch door to the upper level and throws out a binder to fool him. Carson hears the upstairs thud and leaves. Kyle exits and encounters a guilt-ridden Stephanie slapping her palm with a large flashlight. Kyle talks her down and punches her out. Stephanie panics and flees the plane, abandoning Carson who looks on. Kyle during this time searches avionics and finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her how he gagged and dumped her daughter into the food bin. He disparages the people aboard who would never care enough to notice. Carson points his gun to where Julia lay before, but they're not there. He turns around and sees Kyle carrying Julia, escaping through a small door with the detonator in hand. Carson shoots at her as she closes the door. She detonates the explosives, killing Carson. The compartment she and Julia hid in was non-combustible, which keeps them safe. Kyle, carrying Julia, exits via a cargo door. Everyone watches in shock and amazement as Kyle carries her daughter out onto the tarmac. Later in the passenger waiting section of the airport, Marcus apologizes to a seated Kyle holding Julia in her arms. Stephanie is led away by FBI agents and more agents approach Kyle, asking her to identify the morgue director in Berlin who has been detained. She carries Julia still unconscious through the crowd of passengers, silently redeeming herself. One of the Arab passengers (Michael Irby) helps pick up her bag, a symbolic act of respect and forgiveness. Before loading her daughter into a van to take them away, Julia wakes up and sleepily asks "Are we there yet?" as they drive away. In this movie appears Christian Berkel who will later play the role of Fritz Shimon Haber in Haber (2008) .

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Flightplan Parent Guide

How can you loose a child when you are cruising thousands of feet over the ocean? Although Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) doesn't know how it happened, there is one thing she is sure of -- she is not going to stop searching the plane until she finds her daughter (Marlene Lawston).

Release date September 22, 2005

Run Time: 98 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

One of the tools Alfred Hitchcock used to “thrill” us was putting his characters into situations they were not physically able to leave. Lifeboat placed his cast in a small craft floundering on the ocean, while in Rear Window Jimmy Stewart’s lame character was confined to his stifling apartment. The creators of Flightplan have tapped this effective method of engaging the audience by providing a similar sense of containment and adding a missing child to the roster.

As a propulsion engineer, Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) has an intimate knowledge of the E-474 plane she is flying on to return to the United States. The huge two-level futuristic (and fictional) craft is the largest in the air, and the nearly 500 people aboard still aren’t enough to fill every seat. Unfortunately for Kyle, her ride isn’t for pleasure. Instead, she is accompanying her late husband’s body for stateside burial after a tragic accident took his life outside their home in Berlin.

Still, after a complete scouring of the plane, the child cannot be found. Becoming even more frantic and starting to make accusations against a fellow passenger of Arab descent, Captain Rich assigns Air Marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) to keep the woman confined to her seat, which doesn’t turn out to be an easy job. With a complete understanding of every nook and cranny of the airliner, Kyle continues to evade Carson and the Captain in an attempt to continue her anxious hunt.

While Foster holds star position in this film, perhaps the greatest performance was off-camera. The set design of this fantastic aircraft contributes as much to the movie’s environment and believability as does the acting and script. Built on a monstrous soundstage, the two levels of the plane never existed at the same time during production, yet the final result is a seamless realism, with the characters chasing each other up and down the spiral staircase.

As for family viewing, the story generates peril primarily by using dialogue and paranoia. The most positive message is the focused determination of Foster’s character, which explicitly portrays the powerful love between a mother and child. The film also questions our tendency to believe what we are told, and the new “secure” Post-9/11 world in which we live.

Only a few mild and moderate profanities are scattered throughout, along with a veiled implication two crew members have used a storage compartment for “other” activities. That leaves the primary content concerns in the violence category, which includes hand-to-hand conflict such as pushing and yelling, some gunshots and the tension of a bomb scare.

Certainly captivating, parents will likely be comfortable having their older teens join this flight.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Flightplan parents' guide.

Although air travel has become common in our society, many films still capitalize on the fear of flying. How is the impending disaster in this movie different than some of the earlier airplane films? Why does the script concentrate on these changing perceptions of safety? Are the new fears we face warranted? What can we do to alleviate such concerns?

The most recent home video release of Flightplan movie is January 24, 2006. Here are some details…

If you want an in-depth look at the scheme -atics of this Flightplan , Touchstone’s DVD release provides some detailed bonus materials. Along with the filmmaker’s audio commentary, there are two featurettes— The In-Flight Movie: The Making of Flightplan and Cabin Pressure: Designing the Aalto E-474 . Available in either a wide or full screen, both versions offer audio tracks in English (Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1), French, and Spanish, with subtitles in English, Spanish and French.

Related home video titles:

Wes Craven’s Red Eye is another “in-flight” movie. Missing children and a mother’s devoted love are themes explored in the movie The Forgotten .

The Ending Of Flightplan Explained

The 2005 psychological action thriller "Flightplan" stars Academy Award winner Jodie Foster as Kyle Pratt, who suffers every parent's nightmare when she loses track of her daughter. The bigger problem, though, is that they're trapped aboard an international flight from Berlin to the United States, and there are only so many places her daughter could have gone.

Pratt's ordeal takes an even more sinister turn when newly discovered evidence suggests that her daughter may be little more than a figment of her imagination, and she's suddenly faced with the possibility of losing her grip on reality. Is it possible that Julia (Marlene Lawston) doesn't actually exist? Or is there an intricate deception going on, a complex plot being carried about by some unknown agent aboard the plane conspiring to kidnap her daughter for a nefarious purpose? These are the questions that Pratt must face, and the audience must attempt to unravel as the flight heads to its destination.

During the course of the film, it seems like an enemy could be around any corner. Could it be a scheme by international terrorists or a conniving captain, or is the flight's designated sky marshal know more than he's letting on? In a stunning final act, all the answers are revealed. And we're here to get to the bottom of it all, from a nerve-wracking chase through the bowels of the plane to the film's many spine-tingling twists. Stow away your tray tables and put your seat in an upright position, because this is the ending of "Flightplan" explained.

What you need to know about Flightplan

When "Flightplan" begins, Kyle Pratt — an airline engineer (and designer of the Elgin E-474 double-decker passenger jet) is in Germany, identifying the body of her husband David (John Benjamin Hickey), who recently died after a fall. Kyle is having visions of her husband and is understandably distraught, but must collect her young daughter Julia for the trip back to the United States. With her husband's body in a casket secured with a digital passcode, they board an Elgin E-474 and depart for home.

Not long after takeoff, however, Kyle loses sight of Julia aboard the plane when she falls asleep after taking anxiety medication. Captain Rich ( Sean Bean ) reluctantly orders a search of the jet from nose to tail but turns up nothing. Kyle is even more disturbed, however, when she learns that nobody aboard seems to even remember that her daughter existed, and Julia's name is not on the plane's manifest. Then, when records back in Berlin say that Julia died along with David, Kyle must face the possibility that she's suffering from hallucinations. 

But Kyle's discovery of her daughter's presence — in the form of a heart she'd drawn on the plane's window — sends her on a desperate fight to prove her daughter has been kidnapped. Knowing the ins and outs of the plane's design, she must elude the crew, including sky marshal Gene Carson (Peter Saarsgard), to find Julia and discover who is responsible for her daughter's disappearance before it's too late.

What happened at the end of Flightplan?

Throughout "Flightplan," Kyle is presented with overwhelming proof that she's been suffering from tragedy-induced hallucinations: She's told that her daughter is dead, and the lead flight attendant even insists that Julia never boarded with her. Meanwhile, Carson the sky marshal — sympathizing with her plight –  enlists the aid of a therapist among the passengers to help her understand that what's happening may all be in her mind. But Kyle is unwilling to shake the feeling that something may have happened to Julia aboard the plane, and she rushes to find her daughter, who she believes has been kidnapped by an unknown enemy.

Sneaking into the plane's hold, Kyle unlocks her husband's casket, thinking Julia may be hidden inside, but finds only David's lifeless body. But because she's gone rogue, Captain Rich believes Kyle is now a danger to the flight, and has the flight diverted to Newfoundland, where they will have her arrested. It's then that Rich is informed that Kyle is not what she appears, and is told that she's actually a terrorist holding the flight hostage for a large ransom, and has been using her daughter's apparent disappearance as a ruse. 

Kyle realizes that she's being framed as a hijacker when the plane lands in Newfoundland. Knowing her daughter is still hidden aboard the plane, and deducing the mastermind of the entire plot, Kyle thinks on her feet to turn the tables on the real villain.

Who is the real villain in Flightplan?

Perhaps trying to recapture the eerieness of movies like "The Sixth Sense" or "Fight Club," the realization that Julia may only be a figment of Kyle's imagination casts a pall over much of the film. Could Kyle be losing her sanity, and inventing the entire scenario to cope with the death of her husband and child? The reality, however, is that Julia did indeed board the plane, and was kidnapped as part of an elaborate plot to ransom the flight for $50 million dollars. And it was Carson — the flight's designated sky marshal — who was behind the entire affair, and he's told Captain Rich that she's the real hijacker in an effort to get away with his crime.

In a shocking final twist, though, we learn that Carson isn't just a fiendish arch-criminal, he's also a murderer: He was responsible for the death of Kyle's husband David, who he'd killed to ensure a secured casket would be aboard the flight. Only with the casket aboard would he have had a means of smuggling the necessary explosives aboard the plane undetected. Julia's kidnapping was the second phase of his plan. 

Sedating the six-year-old, he planned to keep little Julia hidden away, using her disappearance to drive Kyle to search the hold and enter her secret password to unlock the casket. This would give him access to the explosives which he'd set around the plane to threaten its destruction while framing Kyle for the whole thing.

Who was involved in the plot and what happened to them?

Gene Carson is the mastermind behind the plot to hijack the flight out of Berlin, and he kidnaps little Julia to set his plan in motion. But he doesn't do it alone, and actually has other accomplices working behind the scenes, though it's not immediately clear who they are and what part they played. Though some may have suspected Captain Rich given his nasty attitude, it's actually Stephanie (Kate Beahan), the lead flight attendant, who is his primary accomplice. Though not said directly, it was likely Stephanie who altered the flight's manifest and deleted Julia's name, and it was her word about not seeing Julia with her during boarding that helps sway others into believing that the child was never there.

In addition, the film's final scenes reveal that a mortuary worker in Berlin has been arrested as a part of the scheme. It was this third accomplice who was responsible for falsifying the records of Julia's death. Stephanie is arrested by the FBI in Newfoundland. But when it comes to Carson, it's up to Kyle to take him down.

Upon their landing, she realizes she's being set up. In an attempt to save lives and catch Carson, she plays along with his plan, poses as the real terrorist, and orders everyone off the plane except for the two of them. Knowing the inside of the plane inside and out, she's able to rescue her daughter from the secret avionics compartment and lock Carson inside where she detonates the explosives, killing him in a massive fireball.

What was the Flightplan really about?

"Flightplan" can easily be seen for what it appears to be on the surface: A psychological thriller and suspenseful action movie about a woman determined to stop a villain who has kidnapped her daughter. The question of whether the fiendish plot is real or imagined makes it a mind-bender, too, but there is much more going on beneath the surface that audiences may not have even realized.

At its core, "Flightplan" is about dealing with a life-changing event. The story of Kyle, who is shaken by the loss of her husband so profoundly that she struggles to maintain her sanity, explores what it takes to re-awaken from tragedy. Brought back to reality thanks to the disappearance of her daughter, "Flightplan" examines "the fragility of existence" and how helpless it can feel to not be in control, said director Robert Schwentke in a 2005 interview with Phase 9 .

"I had cancer when I was 27 and I was misdiagnosed and so by the time they caught it, it was a bit of a problem and I spent a lot of time in the hospital. And since then I just sort of think you're not in control. You may think you're in control but you're really not." Schwentke had already made a film about his experience, the German comedy "Eierdeibe," but "Flightplan" allowed him to deal with the more serious side. "The movie starts with somebody who has just experienced a tremendous tragedy ... And she has to really rebuild her psyche, and rebuild her world."

What has the cast and crew said about the ending of Flightplan?

Director Robert Schwentke isn't the only one to discuss the ending of "Flightplan." Star Jodie Foster also opened up about her character Kyle's evolving story in the film, and where she winds up when it's all said and done. Describing the film as "a personal journey," she said it's "a glimpse at how one woman reacts under the greatest sort of stress and panic," during an interview with noted film critic  Emmanuel Levy . "Kyle isn't really so much heroic as she is absolutely driven. She might sometimes be brash, sometimes irrational, other times manipulative. But she will do anything she can to find her daughter."

By contrast, Foster's co-star Peter Saarsgard talked about the difficulties in shooting the film's ending, particularly a moment when Kyle forces the plane into a crash-landing procedure. "The gas masks coming down" was the toughest part for him, according to his own chat with Phase 9 . "And there were so many extras and when the masks come down all hell is breaking loose." Still, the stress he felt filming that sequence, he admitted, was nothing compared to what all the extras had to deal with. "I give a lot of credit to those extras because they sat in the same seats for three months and we're not allowed to leave the plane — and yes they were in coach!"

How the end of Flightplan divided fans and critics

When "Flightplan" was released to theaters in 2005, it was met with decidedly mixed reviews from critics and fans. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, it sits at just 37% among the pros, though audiences were more favorable. It seems the ending of the film, and especially its multiple twists, is one big reason why it divided opinions. Those who disliked it, like  Empire Magazine , weren't won over, knocking it for plenty of plot holes and a final act that lacks "the big suckerpunch or storytelling grace to deliver a satisfying resolution." That said, it received plenty of positive reviews, too.

Both Roger Ebert and the Observer gave the film good reviews, with the latter calling it an "effective thriller." Ebert meanwhile awarded it an impressive three-and-a-half stars while praising the film's many twists and ability to keep the audience guessing. In fact, he outright refused to discuss the plot beyond its opening set-up because he apparently felt the ending was so successful that he didn't want to spoil it for viewers. "If someone tries to tell you anything else about 'Flightplan,' walk away."

Still, even some who liked the movie weren't wholly satisfied with the ending. "There are a few too many turns towards the end, and the climax errs towards anti-climatic," said Joshua Starnes of ComingSoon.net , while still recommending the film and giving it a pretty solid 7 out of 10 rating.

How casting subverted the audience's expectations

Throughout "Flightplan," the audience is constantly kept wondering what's really going on, with new information that makes one rethink everything. From the discovery that Julia's name isn't on the manifest, to a call with officials in Berlin that reveals Kyle's daughter actually died in an accident, nothing is as it seems. Repeatedly, viewers are forced to question everyone in the movie and wonder what their motives might be, and as it turns out, the film used its casting to help ratchet up the suspense, as explained in a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Executive producer Robert Dinozzi said that they wanted to keep audiences guessing about eventual villain Gene Carson, and cast Peter Saarsgard. A lesser-known actor at the time, a decade before he played the sinister Bogue in the remake of "The Magnificent Seven," his biggest roles at that point were playing soft-spoken types. "Not being able to identify Peter [Saarsgard] as the villain until very late in the movie allows us to also perhaps aim the audience's attention at characters like [Captain Rich]," Dinozzi said . 

To throw off the audience further, the film intentionally chose Sean Bean, known for playing villains, in the role of Rich, who they knew audiences would immediately suspect as being the baddie. "I've seen a lot of movies with Sean [Bean] and he seems to be typecast for a very specific type of role," Dinozzi said, perhaps alluding to his villainous parts in movies like "Patriot Games," "GoldenEye," and the previous year's "National Treasure." 

How the story of Flightplan changed during development

The climax of "Flightplan" almost turned out very differently than what we got on screen. According to director Robert Schwetke, he completely overhauled the original script, which initially featured a totally different kind of protagonist. "The movie was actually written for a man," he an interview with MTV . As the director described, the male hero struggled to connect with his daughter, who he rarely sees, before her disappearance. "Then we had the idea ... maybe we need to do this with a mother."

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 also forced a major shift in the story. While the finished film does capture the paranoia of post-9/11 air travel, particularly in a subplot related to a pair of Middle Eastern passengers who are wrongly accused of abducting Kyle's daughter, the original version of the film was more overtly a story of an in-flight hijacking. "It had been written prior to 9/11 and it dealt with terrorists on board of a commercial airliner en route to New York," Schwentke told Phase 9 . One draft would have seen an airport security officer lose track of his son, and fight to take down a fiendish terrorist plot in mid-air.

 "Post-9/11 there's not a lot of pleasure in that," Schwentke acknowledged. "I just felt that we could put the emphasis on whether the girl, Jodie's character's daughter, exists or not, and make that the dramatic engine of the movie." 

How the ending of Flighplan caused a real-life controversy

There are loads of thrilling moments and even some heart-stopping action in "Flightplan," from the tension of a missing child to the explosive finale. Yet there was one other bit of excitement surrounding the film beyond the cheers from fans singing its praises. There was a group of detractors whose assessment of the film was harsher than even its worst reviews, and it stirred up a scandal on the film's release thanks to the movie's twist ending.

As detailed by the Guardian not long after "Flightplan" hit theaters, the Association of Flight Attendants, the union that speaks on behalf of flight crews in the United States — along with sister union the Professional Flight Attendants Association — condemned the film for its portrayal of the staff aboard the movie's airline. In particular, they took issue with how unhelpful many of the flight attendants in the film were, which they believe gave them a bad name, as well as for portraying the leading flight attendant as a participant in a terrorist plot. 

Calling the film an "outrage," the organization's president Patricia Friend said bluntly that "We will tell Hollywood that this disrespect to our profession is not going to fly." Their hopes of sparking a widespread boycott of the film, however, proved fruitless, as the film easily captured the top spot at the box office the weekend it landed in cinemas, en route to a spectacular $223 million dollar worldwide finish.

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Movie Review: Flightplan (2005)

• General Disdain
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> October 25, 2005

Let me start this review by saying that if my wife, whom I love dearly, didn’t want to watch this move, I wouldn’t have gone near it. I’ll be the first to admit Jodie Foster is a top-tier actress, but that fact didn’t outweigh the notion that Flightplan is a hokey piece of shit.

First, Flightplan starts off very, very slowly. Robert Schwentke (director) tries to build up relationships and character insights during this period, but it is done in a lazy manner. I don’t think I learned anything for the 40 minutes dedicated to this, other than Jodie Foster’s husband fell off a roof and she is moving to NY with her child to escape. A lot of time spent about nothing.

What was good, as expected, was the performance Jodie Foster puts forth. She is undoubtedly worth her price tag as an actress. She portrays a distraught woman (death of husband, loss of job, missing child) very realistically. My wife basically made it known that she would have behaved in a similar fashion. Which means like a crazy person!

What was bad, as expected, was the plot. How on earth didn’t anyone on a crowded plane not see a little girl? Not even the flight attendants? How is it possible to steal away an eight year old girl without anyone hearing or seeing? On a fucking plane no less! Lastly, I hope to God that Homeland Security has better flight marshals on board international flights than what was presented here. This guy makes every bonehead move in the book.

What you get here is a semi-thrilling movie that, although based in a reality setting, expects the viewer to suspend common sense to make the movie work. Bullshit. Wasted is a top notch performance by Jodie Foster.

Tagged: airplane , daughter , search

I'm an old, miserable fart set in his ways. Some of the things that bring a smile to my face are (in no particular order): Teenage back acne, the rain on my face, long walks on the beach and redneck women named Francis. Oh yeah, I like to watch and criticize movies.

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