FlightPlan: Movie Review

Flight Plan is a thriller, which starts as an interesting ride but goes aground in the middle.

I have seen only a few movies of Jodie Foster. Still, if I know that she is part of a movie I'm bound to have high expectations. So, when FlightPlan began I thought 'its going to be something special!'


Kyle Pratt (Foster) is distraught with grief as her husband died in an accident while in Berlin. She arranges to transport his casket in a jumbo jet to New York for the funeral. She boards the plane along with her 6-year-old daughter Julia. It is shown that she is an over-protective mother who doesn't want her daughter to be out of her sight. By the way Kyle Pratt helped design the jet that they are boarding!

Once inside the plane Kyle takes a nap and when she wakes up her daughter is missing. She goes searching and panics when the kid was not found. She seeks the help of flight attendants. They are not really concerned because the plane is large enough for a girl to lose her way. But, after the first round of search Julia is still missing. The pilot asks other passengers to not to leave their seats for an intense search. And instead of all these troubles and some unfortunate incidents her daughter is not found!

As the movie advances we get to know that no one in the plane has ever seen Julia! And there is no record of her boarding! And the pilot gets information from Berlin that the girl was killed along with her father! Every one suspects that Kyle is having a psychological problem. Now, Kyle is having doubts about her own stability. Was Julia just an illusion of her bereaved mind?! She is not sure and she can't trust anyone.


If I explain the rest it won't be a thriller, right? So lets leave it here.

Now, you might think it’s really worth your money. I would say NO! Of course Jodie Foster is unquestionable. She makes us feel or the character. Whatever she does appear natural.….very convincing. FlightPlan got solid backing from Jodie and an intriguing plot. Then what went awry? I mean 'about the film'...not 'in the film'!


For one thing, the best part of a thriller is missing here - a logical explanation for each and every incident and every word spoken. I don't mean that everything should be explained in the end forcefully. Just that, with the given information an average movie-goer should be able to solve all the mystery in the end. This is exactly where the FlightPlan fails. The scriptwriter didn't really apply any commonsense. There are so many loopholes that you can't beleive it had a script! You wanna see Jodie Foster perform? Fine....go ahead! You wanna see a thriller? STOP!!!!

The conclusion: Too many unanswered WHYs and HOWs don't do any good to a thriller.

Categories: Movie, Review, Hollywood, Thriller