Common Sense Note
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 six-year-old daughter disappears mid-flight 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 importantly, parents should know that the tension is frequently very taut; be aware of what your child might tolerate and understand.
Families might discuss 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?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
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.
As suddenly widowed mother and propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt, Foster is provided a broad range of emotion. Practical-minded and self-contained in her grief, Kyle first appears in mid-dream, 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. The action begins as Kyle and six-year-old Julia (Marlene Lawson) are transporting the body back to the States, aboard a giant airbus that Kyle helped to design.
Methodically and delicately, FLIGHTPLAN situates mother and daughter: Julia is concerned that workers de-icing the plane might fall off their platform, Kyle is quietly reassuring. The other passengers fiddle and make noise (especially the family in the seats just in front of Kyle's), the flight attendants -- including "new kid" Fiona (Erika Christensen) and very precise Stephanie (Kate Beahan) -- strap themselves in for take-off. Gargantuan, the plane rises, rattling and groaning occasionally.
The thriller part kicks in when Kyle wakes a couple of hours later to find Julia missing. Though she tires 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.
Kyle briefly thinks an Arab passenger (Assaf Cohen) who looks at her funny is involved (inviting fellow passengers to act out their own racism and disquiet). When a conveniently available therapist (Greta Scacchi) suggests Kyle has succumbed to overwhelming grief, and imagined Julia lived when really she died with her father, Kyle pauses to consider this possibility.
But the movie never veers from Kyle's perspective, which means you 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.
Families who enjoy this movie should check out its primary influence, Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Kurt Russell searches for his missing wife in a small town in Breakdown, and U.S. President Harrison Ford saves Air Force One in Air Force One (1997). You might also see an R-rated, similarly tense film involving children and a very sharp performance by Nicole Kidman as their worried mother, The Others (2001).
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentBrief flirtation between flight attendants. |
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ViolenceA father's suicide referenced at start; action picks up later including physical fights and a bomb ticking. |
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LanguageTense arguments, no cursing to speak of. |
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Social BehaviorVillains are tricky, authorities (the captain and flight attendants) are slow to pick up on villainy, and mother is admirably resolute throughout. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome drinks discussed by flight attendants. |
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