Flightplan

Movie review by Cynthia Fuchs, Common Sense Media
Flightplan Poster Image

Common Sense says

age 13+

Tense but riveting thriller, best for teens+.

PG-13 2005 93 minutes
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Parents say

age 12+

Based on 12 reviews

Kids say

age 12+

Based on 25 reviews

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A Lot or a Little?

The parents' guide to what's in this movie.

What Parents Need to Know

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 6-year-old daughter disappears midflight 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 important, parents should know that the tension is frequently very taut; be aware of what your child might tolerate and understand.

Community Reviews

wonder dove
wonder dove Adult
October 25, 2013
age 13+

Joy ride for teens & adults!

Excellent movie! Jodie Foster is awesome as usual, great acting and very suspenseful story. Jodie plays Kyle who is a loving mother to her little 6 year old girl, Julia. After her husband dies, Kyle transfers his body from Berlin back to New York in a huge airbus she helped to design. One night while flying, Kyle wakes up to find her daughter missing. Frantic and scared while searching for hours, Kyle is convinced by crew members that her daughter doesn't exist because there was no passport to prove it, plus, nobody remembers seeing her. She is blamed for her medication for anxiety (due to the loss of her husband). But certain clues to Julia's existence keeps Kyle from giving up and no one can stop her until she finds out the truth. Language isn't too bad but contains uses of sh*t, [email protected], hell, Jesus Christ. Violence includes reference to suicide, death of a loved one, explosions, a man shoots at a woman, a fire extinguisher is smashed on a guys head resulting in bloody head/ear, a man knocks a woman down and she hits her face on the arm of a chair and goes unconscious, a woman punches a woman in the face, another woman is knocked down, lots of yelling between characters, a group fight starts but no real injuries, a man falls out of a passage way and injures his leg, arm grabbing and twisting, a dead man is shown inside a casket, passengers go crazy when lights go out for a minute on the plane and emergency masks fall down, two creepy men watch a woman from her window. Sexual content has nothing except brief flirting between flight attendants. No drinking, drugs or smoking. Excellent yet gripping PG-13 movie for 13 and up!

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
Too much violence
Too much swearing
1 person found this helpful.
Tsion
Tsion Adult
May 3, 2009
age 13+

A Tense, Riveting Thriller...

FLIGHTPLAN would be a good thriller for teens and preteens who are eager to see more mature films but who aren't quite ready for the content. Jodie Foster is perfect in her role, and she makes the movie great fun to watch. Violence is the only issue in the movie. A person is scratched in the face after hitting an armrest, and another is hit in the face with a fire extinguisher. There is some blood in the resulting cuts. The overall tone of the movie is threatening and intense, but it never gets edgy or creepy; it's just enough to give the movie an edge-of-your-seat feeling. Language consists of some "godd**n"s and one or two "h*ll"s.

This title has:

Too much violence
See all 12 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Newly widowed Kyle (Jodie Foster) is transporting the body of her husband back to the States aboard a giant airbus that Kyle helped to design. With her is their daughter, six-year-old Julia (Marlene Lawson). Both fall asleep early in the flight. Kyle wakes up a couple of hours into the flight to find Julia missing. Though she tries 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. As the crew and passengers are increasingly turning against Kyle, she fights to find Julia.

Is It Any Good?

As suddenly widowed mother and propulsion engineer Kyle Pratt, Foster provides a broad range of emotion. Practical-minded and self-contained in her grief, Kyle first appears in middream, 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. 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.

But the movie never veers from Kyle's perspective, which means viewers 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.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about 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?

Movie Details

Our Editors Recommend

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    The Others

    Good but creepy; may be too intense for some.

    age 14+

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