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In Flightplan, Robert Schwentke infuses suspense in the Hitchcockian tradition.
Jodie Foster has come a long way since her child actress days (in Tom Sawyer) to her adolescent ones (in Taxi Driver) and then onto her star status era (The Accused and Silence of the Lamb) and then her post-star days (Panic Room). Now a veteran, she plays a widow who faces an odd predicament of losing her six-year-old child on a transatlantic flight. There are shades of playing a single mother trapped with her daughter in Panic Room. This role seems to have been written with her in mind. Returning from Berlin to New York after the sudden demise of her husband she (Foster) finds that after an in-flight snooze, her daughter suddenly vanishes into the blue. And no one on the flight recalls having ever seen her. Did she ever exist? Or is she hallucinating? Is the crew, including an air-marshal (Peter Sarsgaard) and the plane’s commander (Sean Bean) hatching a sinister plot against her? Remember The Lady Vanishes? Well, this is apparently inspired by that classic. What’s more, director Robert Schwentke of Tattoo fame, begins promisingly. In the Hitchcockian tradition, he infuses suspense in large doses. Suspicion is sprinkled like mustard and the action is absorbing. Like peeling layers of an onion, Schwentke has his viewers in a trance. Frame follows frame and the tension builds up grippingly till almost after the halfway mark. He is helped no doubt by yet another sterling performance by Jodie Foster who is ably supported by European actor Peter Sarsgaard. The grey areas surely keep the viewer guessing. But the wishy-washy climax undoes most of the earlier fare and the film tends to disintegrate. It is a bit of an anti-climax. The film seems to lose its way, a common malady in some of today’s films, and this is because of a weak script. It should be written from the climax backwards. After all the bottom line has to be strong, isn’t it. Still in the light of the poor fare being dished out by Hollywood these days, Flightplan is worth taking a look at, especially for Jodie Foster fans. |
