FOSTER SHINES BRIGHTLY IN FLAWED FLIGHTPLAN

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Acclaimed actress Jodie Foster returns from her brief foray into foreign films (some people might remember her in 2004's A Very Long Engagement), landing front and center in Flightplan, a new thriller directed by Robert Schwentke. As the film opens, Jodie Foster's Kyle is emotionally distraught over the death of a loved one. From the film's opening frame, the story's plot is fraught with possibilities. Is Kyle losing her mind? Does she even have a daughter? What, if any, part of her experience is she dreaming? These and other questions are sure to enter any viewer's mind. As the opening minutes of the film unfold, it is revealed that Kyle is grieving the death of her husband. His death has left her alone to comfort and care for the couple's six-year-old daughter Julia. The two set out to fly to New York City to bury her husband and to spend time with her family. The mother and daughter board a jet that Kyle, an engineer, helped design and therefore knows inside and out. Kyle and Julia have a mother-and daughter-chat before they both fall asleep on the plane. Three hours later Kyle awakens and discovers that Julia is no longer in the seat next to her, and the mystery ensues.

On the plane with her are four hundred passengers and a crew, none of whom are not as helpful or sympathetic as viewers might initially suspect. Sitting closest to her, though, is an air marshall portrayed by Peter Saarsgard. When Kyle asks him if she's seen her daughter, he answers that he hasn't seen her. He's one in a long line of passengers who claim that they have never seen Julia. Saarsgard, memorable in a variety of roles in indie films, delivers these early lines so skillfully that viewers will be hardpressed to know whether his character's intensions are brazenly evil or perceptively sincere.

Foster's performance is particularly effective, and it must be for Flightplan to succeed as a competent thriller with dramatic tension and any measure of emotion. Foster is in nearly every scene in the film. She shifts her eyes, tilts her head, and purses her lips at just the right moments in the film. Our eyes are focused on her. We wonder what her next move will be, what her next thought will be, or what her next revelation will be. Foster allows us to feel Kyle's loneliness, desperation, and exasperation and most importantly, her love for her daughter.

Comparing Flightplan to The Panic Room, another recent Jodie Foster film about a single mother trying to protect her daughter, is inevitable. The cinematography in the earlier film directed by David Fincher (also Seven, The Fight Club, and The Game) is something to behold. Here the work of the camera is curiously restrained. The film's first images of the large, dark plane suggest the possibility of imaginative camerawork but the filmmakers' elect to show off the various parts of the elaborate plane during the film's closing credits, missing an opportunity to enhance the already considerable suspense the story generates. Flightplan, like The Panic Room, is flawed in its story construction. The plot in Flightplan is not so much thinly veiled as it is hastily concluded. Without revealing any of the major plot points, there are at least three sentences that should have been stated in the final fifteen minutes of the film that would have adequately provided an explanation for the actions of at least two key characters. The film defies logic from its premise all the way through to its final act, but this is true of most Hollywood thrillers. If it's not one problem with a thriller, then it's another one. David Koepp's script in The Panic Room lacked ambition and that film was ultimately better than it deserved to be, and the script in Flightplan is filled with some level of imagination and even some insights into solitude and human behavior yet the film falls short of the greatness that it should have achieved. These problems only add credence to my belief that thrillers are among the most difficult films to create to satisfaction. Thrillers either fail to generate sufficient suspense or they generate too much of it to the detriment of the story. Flightplan and its sister film The Panic Room suffer a bit from the latter.

But like most successful thrillers, Flightplan succeeds in spite of itself. It's a well-acted, perfectly-paced film for an audience that may not mind trading questions, answers, and possible theories about plot points several minutes after the film ends. Ultimately, people will remember Foster's performance, her energy, her passion, and her level of excellence and look forward to her next film---albeit one worthy of another great performance.

Grade: B-

Curiously, Disney opted not to screen Flightplan for critics.


Movie News and Notes

Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand will star in North Country, a true story about a woman who takes on a mining company in a sexual harrassment suit. The film, which is drawing comparisons to Silkwood and Norma Rae is set to open in October.

Negative word of mouth at the Toronto Film Festival prompted director Cameron Crowe to rush back to the editing room and to put the finishing touches on Elizabethtown, a dramedy starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. Crowe unveiled a 135-minute version of his film at the festival. The much-publicized film is scheduled to be in wide release by the middle of October.

People are beginning to talk Oscars and a few names surfaced at the Toronto Film Festival. Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance in Capote, the biopic about the great American writer as did Joaquin Phoenix's portrayal as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line were two subjects of note during the festival. No film generated as much buzz, though, as Ang Lee's adaptation of Anne Proux's short story Brokeback Mountain. The film will star Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Aaron Eckart, who portrayed womanizing scoundrels in Neil LaButte's In the Company of Men and Nurse Betty, is turning heads for his performance in the political satire entitled, Thank You for Smoking. The film was among those shown at the Toronto Film Festival.

Liev Schreiber, the actor who portrayed Meryl Streep's son in The Manchurian Candidate, has made his directorial debut with Everything is Illuminated. Elijah Wood is set to star.

Evidently, there is a reason why An Unfinished Life, the new film starring Jennifer Lopez, Robert Redford, and Morgan Freeman, sat on studio shelves since 2003. The film has opened to surprisingly lukewarm reviews. Redford and Freeman are Oscar winners and Lasse Hallstrom, the film's director, is a two-time Oscar nominee.

The five highest grossing films the week ending September 23 are as follows:

The Exorcism of Emily Rose $30.1 million (life-to-date gross $30.1 million)
The 40 Year-Old Virgin $7.7 million (life-to-date gross $82.1 million)
Transporter 2 $7.4 million (life-to-date gross $30 million)
The Constant Gardener $4.7 million (life-to-date gross $19.0 million)
Red Eye $4.5 million (life-to-date gross $51.2 million)

A History of Violence, perhaps David Cronenberg's most accessible film since The Fly, will open nationwide on Friday, September 30. The film stars Vigo Morggensen, Mario Bello, and Ed Harris.

Rod Lurie, who wrote and directed The Contender, has created Commander in Chief, the new primetime television show chronicling the exploits of the First Lady. An estimated 2.2 million viewers tuned in to the first episode on Tuesday, September 27.

Thomas Harris, the author of Silence of the Lambs, is putting the finishing touches on a screenplay that will serve as the prequel to the films featuring Hecter Lecter, the cannibalizing psychiatrist. Peter Webber, who directed Girl with a Peal Earring, has been tapped for the project.