Flightplan (DVD)

Jodie Foster plays Kyle Pratt, a woman that has lost her child aboard a double decker Aalto E-474, a plane she helped design. She and her daughter were heading back to the United States following the unfortunate death of her husband as he fell off their roof. Coupled with grief and now despair Kyle sets off on a mission to blame everyone aboard the plane and leave no stone unturned as she hopes to find her daughter and get to the bottom of her strange disappearance.

Flightplan is a film that you can see what is happening before it happens, sometimes WAY before it happens. Although filled with a stellar cast this film falls apart as you slowly become unconcerned about Pratt's daughter and more concerned about when she is going to realize who the bad guy is and what she is going to do about it. I also must admit that the trailers for this film gave so much of this film away that there was never any real concern for her daughter at all.

Even though the casting of Flightplan makes an attempt to throw you off course by cleverly placing big name stars in less than prominent roles the ending is well within sight. This is not to say that I don't think you shouldn't watch Flightplan, I just don't think you should buy it. Overall the performances are fantastic, honestly I think Sean Bean is stellar in his small role as the pilot of the gigantic plane and Jodie Foster and Peter Sarsgaard give the performances we have come to expect from these two great actors.

As for the DVD features there is a little to talk about, but it is more along the lines of something they said as opposed to the overall appeal of the features. Flightplan, you see, actually used to center around a man and his dealings with terrorists, but thanks to Sept. 11th that script wasn't going to fly, pun intended. So the man became a woman and the ordeal became a missing child aboard a transatlantic flight. All that is fine and dandy, but when you have a good script, but the timing isn't right I say wait a few years on it, let society get back to normal and let her rip. Don't go changing the whole story and try to make it work, things get missed that way and ultimately you don't get the movie you could have had in the beginning.

I also don't think movie studios give the movie-going audience enough credit as to when to distinguish between reality and make-believe. Granted a film about a terrorist hi-jacking of a plane might not have gone over so well in 2002, but Flightplan came out in 2005 and in 2006 we have two films (Flight 93 and World Trade Center) based on the tragedy of 9/11. I don't know about you, but I think that original story would have been fine.

On a whole, Flightplan is a mediocre movie that will probably play much better on DVD than it did in the theaters. Despite the fact that it did rake in an unexplainable $89 million at the box-office this movie is not all it is cracked up to be. Since it is only 98 minutes long watching it from your couch will seem like a brief moment in time. You will mildly enjoy it while you watch, but once it is done you will be returning it to Blockbuster without a second thought.