Flightplan (2005)

If you were to look up "Average" in the dictionary, you may well see a picture of this film. In fact this film is so depressingly average i can barely remember seeing it. I had been wanting to see it since its release in 2005. I liked the trailer and the narrative seemed interesting. However above all it was the cast that interested me. Jodie Foster who i enjoy watching in a majority of her films. Peter Sarsgaard, who had impressed me in "Garden State£ and was compelling in "Shattered Glass". However my like for the cast could not save this film

It's just a bit of a mess. incase you don't know the story is :

*A bereaved woman and her daughter are flying home from Berlin to America. At 30,000 feet the child vanishes and nobody admits she was ever on that plane* {Cheers IMDB!}

The main reason for me this film fails is this statement i found that IMDB used to describe it:

"A claustrophobic, Hitchcockian thriller"

Yeah, for a bit. I will admit, it does work as a hitchcockian thriller for the first 30-50 minutes where its more about her quizing passengers about the location of her daughter. Then we have Peter Sarsgaard who starts off quite scary with a quiet menace. Then he and his flight attendant girlfriend hold up the plane with a bomb and peter has a fight with jodie and the plane blows up. yes Hitchcockian, i remember in Rear window when James Stewart grabs a rocket launcher and blows up the opisite house. Also there was this subplot idea of jodie's character being physcologically unsound and she may of never brought her daughter on the plane, or there was never a daughter. This was a nice enough idea, but once it was discussed once, it became tiresome. There isn't really a sense of danger, its too slow. She runs around for a bit, the passengers get annoyed, Sean bean looks stern , then the plane explodes.

All in all this isn't the worst film ever, its just a mess of a film. It's nothing special, it doesn't try anything new, i got a strong sense i'd seen it before.