Flightplan

Jodie Foster is a truly great actress and her presence elevates this film above what it really should be. In the same way that Will Smith made Hitch a good film, she lifts an intriguing and but ultimately flawed thriller to higher places through her committed and nuanced performance. The set up is good enough, a recently widowed woman and her daughter board a plane bound for America, when she wakes up half way the daughter is missing and no-one remembers seeing her. The first half of the film builds on this well with a slow build up of tension, some great tense set pieces and atmospheric camera work and performances. The plane itself is wonderfully realised, futuristic and yet believable (though you’d think someone would have thought to actually decorate the plane on the outside with a colour scheme.) However the film gradually runs out of steam as it fails to find an ending worthy of the setup, a lot of great work is wasted in the rather typical and clichéd denouement. That said the film is not a total waste, like I said it has some great performances and ideas, and a great first half, it’s just such a shame that the script writes itself into such a corner that it can’t satisfy its intentions with a worthy ending. Peter Sasgaard and Sean Bean provide decent support to Foster, but you feel that a great thriller has been wasted here with something merely ordinary. The landing may be rather shaky and disappointing, but ultimately this is a trip more about the journey than the destination. Half of a great thriller, Jodie Foster excels in an intriguing and emotional drama that falls apart at the end and fails to live up to it's impressive first half. Worth a look.