by Chris Narkun
Daily Lobo
Usually, you can count on Jodie Foster in a thriller.
Since breaking out as a 14-year-old prostitute in "Taxi Driver" through her role opposite Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs" and, most recently, as a woman protecting her daughter from a deranged Dwight Yoakam in "Panic Room," Foster's always been able to select roles in believable and suspenseful material with the best directors.
Tellingly, she avoided the disappointing "Lambs" sequel "Hannibal," seemingly demonstrating that she could pick the diamonds from the dirt.
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Until her role in "Flightplan," a film which features a solid cast - including Peter Sarsgaard of "Garden State," Sean Bean and Erika Christensen - and a plot that's too good to be true to the point that it can't be believably resolved, especially under the unsteady direction of Robert Schwentke in his big-budget debut.
Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a woman taking her 6-year-old daughter home after a family tragedy in Germany, who just happens to be traveling on a double-decker 450-passenger plane she helped design.
The surreal opening sequence gives hope the movie may be more substantial than the action-oriented trailers would lead a viewer to believe, and the slow leak of information regarding the protagonist and her recent history is a good hook. When Foster wakes during the trans-Atlantic flight to discover her daughter completely vanished and the aircrew strangely unhelpful, what seems to be a first-class mystery is established.
The movie seems to be going along pretty well as either a good psychological mind-bender or a paranoid thriller on the level of 1997's missing-family-member classic "Breakdown."
Then, in the last act, "Flightplan" reveals itself, inexplicably abandoning the psychological elements painstakingly built up through the first hour and, far worse, falling flat on its face in resolving the twisted, complex setup. The reason given for Foster's kid disappearing is so nonsensical, so poorly presented and so rife with giant plot holes and unresolved subplots that it takes the whole movie down with it.
"Flightplan" is one of those rare films whose outcome is so disappointing, so deprived of credibility that it stains all the fine, acceptable or even downright good elements of the rest of the film. One can't think back to any of the thoughtful, provocative or surprising early scenes without bemoaning that the film didn't explore this or that plot element - any of which, it seems, would have resulted in a far more satisfying, intelligent thriller.
Supposedly, the first draft of the script involved terrorist hijackers, but was substantially - though half-heartedly - rewritten after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The unfortunate aftermath leaves "Flightplan" the film most in need of a good dose of terrorism since "Herbie: Fully Loaded."
