"Flightplan" strings its audience along quite well for an hour before collapsing face first when it makes that last turn of plot. Admirable tension. Insulting revelation.

Jodie Foster plays beneath her talents as Kyla Pratt, an airplane engineer flying from Germany to America for the funeral of her husband, whose casket lies in the cargo hold. She has a young daughter, Julia, who disappears early in the flight. Kyla knows the plane, and knows where and how to order a full-fledged search of it. An air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard), two airline attendants (Kate Beehan and Erika Christensen) and the lead pilot (Sean Bean) are the primary search party. Nothing comes up. In fact, Julia isn't in the passenger log. In fact, Julia has been listed by the German coroner as dead.

There is an answer to this, and it doesn't involve ghosts or Kyla dreaming it all up. Before this solution is revealed, director Robert Schwentke nicely handles the red herrings, which includes a couple Middle Eastern men who were seen by Kyla the night before. Are they the kidnappers? What is the short sequence with that therapist all about? Which of those two flight attendants seem less trustworthy? Is the air marshal straight up? The captain? Did the husband really commit suicide? Is he even dead? Is Elvis? Paul? Tupac?

It mostly works until the point when the movie must show its hand, and while the villains of "Flightplan" mildly surprised me, they did not delight me. The questions that film critic Roger Ebert asserts won't hit you until after the movie assaulted me immediately. The odds of the Julia Plot getting as far as it did were equal to winning the Powerball lottery. Maybe that person in Oregon bought it. I didn't.
"Flightplan" strings its audience along quite well for an hour before collapsing face first when it makes that last turn of plot. Admirable tension. Insulting revelation. Jodie Foster plays beneath her talents as Kyla Pratt, an airplane engineer flying from Germany to America for the funeral of her husband, whose casket lies in the cargo hold. She has a young daughter, Julia, who disappears early in the flight. Kyla knows the plane, and knows where and how to order a full-fledged search of it. An air marshal (Peter Sarsgaard), two airline attendants (Kate Beehan and Erika Christensen) and the lead pilot (Sean Bean) are the primary search party. Nothing comes up. In fact, Julia isn't in the passenger log. In fact, Julia has been listed by the German coroner as dead. There is an answer to this, and it doesn't involve ghosts or Kyla dreaming it all up. Before this solution is revealed, director Robert Schwentke nicely handles the red herrings, which includes a couple Middle Eastern men who were seen by Kyla the night before. Are they the kidnappers? What is the short sequence with that therapist all about? Which of those two flight attendants seem less trustworthy? Is the air marshal straight up? The captain? Did the husband really commit suicide? Is he even dead? Is Elvis? Paul? Tupac? It mostly works until the point when the movie must show its hand, and while the villains of "Flightplan" mildly surprised me, they did not delight me. The questions that film critic Roger Ebert asserts won't hit you until after the movie assaulted me immediately. The odds of the Julia Plot getting as far as it did were equal to winning the Powerball lottery. Maybe that person in Oregon bought it. I didn't.