reviewed by Brian "The Naked Gun" Felts
& Benn "Where's the Humanity" Farrell
Jodie Foster (A Very Long Engagement) stars as Kyle, an airplane engineer, who is flying her daughter Berlin
to New York because her husband was killed in an accident. During the trip, the daughter disappears and Kyle
tries to convince the crew that she has a daughter, that no crew member saw, and to help her look for her.
The crew begrudgingly does so but to no avail. Then the captain of the plane, played by Sean Bean (The Island)
is informed from the ground that Kyle's daughter was also killed in the accident.
This isn't the whole story but I need to tell you why I don't like this part of the movie before I
get to the plot twist, at which time I will warn you so you can stop reading if you want. I have a
personal experience in my life that completely invalidates what happened in the first part of the movie.
When I was five yours old, my mother past away and I was put on a plane from Dallas, Texas to Denver, Colorado
and then eventually to Colorado Springs to stay with my grandmother. Before I was put on the plane, both of
my grandmothers called the airline and explained the situation I was in. To make a long story short, I was
treated like a king and was never left alone for longer than a couple of minutes and was talked to the entire
time by the crew and even the co-pilot.
This story about me relates to this movie because, in the film, Kyle and her daughter were the first
ones to board the plan, and the coffin that has her husband was in the cargo hold of the airplane. You
add to the fact that Kyle was one of the original designers of the airplane and I would bet what little
I have that there is NO way that the crew would be unaware that she came on board with daughter. End of
story. So this notion that we are all unaware of our surroundings and a little girl can just disappear,
in an airplane, is ridiculous.
However, to me, the director shot the film in a way so that it was possible that the little girl was dead
and Kyle was going crazy. I would have believed that, a little predictable but believable. But this makes
a better story, an engineer who designed the airplane goes insane because she lost her husband and daughter
and she starts messing with the plane and the crew tries to stop her. That could be a thrilling movie. What
they did instead was to create a conspiracy theory that is too stupid to imagine that it would ever happen.
WARNING: I AM ABOUT TO GIVE THE HOOK AWAY!!
So after its revealed that Kyle apparently lost her daughter and husband in the accident, she gets
loose from the Air Marshall and gets down to the cargo hold of the plane where the casket for her husband
is, thinking that her daughter is hiding in it? Maybe? So she opens it up and sees her husband only. By
this time the Air Marshall, played by Peter Sarsgaard (The Skeleton Key) has caught up to her and puts her
back in her seat. Now, even though Carson (the air marshal) has never given any indication that he believes
Kyle, he decides to go and look for her. What we don't know is that what he is actually doing is going to her
husband's casket, pulling out the small explosive devise that was hidden in the casket and take it to the nose
where the daughter is hidden, sleeping mind you, and plant the bomb. Then the Marshall goes back to the
Captain and tells him that she has brought a bomb on board the plan and will blow it up unless she gets $50
million put into the account. Our conspiracy theory is born, and I got up and left the movie theater.
So the story goes, I hear, that the air marshal, one of the stewardesses and the funeral home director,
are all in the conspiracy and trying to get millions, kill the little girl, and implicate Kyle in the whole
thing. Wow, what a bunch of crap! How could you dream of a story like this and actually make it work.
The only reason why this movie is getting any attention is because we have a highly respected two time Academy
Award ® winner in Jodie Foster giving this movie any kind of legitimacy. Don't get me wrong, I think
the entire cast did a good job, I just think the story is terrible, and if Angelina Jolie was the leading lady
instead of Foster, this movie would not be a success at all.
I ask you why, does this plot work? Is it really possible that a funeral director can know a flight attendant
and an air marshal and say, "Hey, let's terrorize this woman into thinking her kid is gone, kill her kid, and
make $50 million in the process." I know its movies, and we are supposed to suspend our disbelief, but ask
yourself if would have any interest in this movie if the star of the movie was Jennifer Tilly?
This movie is the worst on the year and easily makes my worst movies of all time list. It is not
worth watching and should be erased from your mind. I would say something about Jodie Foster, but
I don't want to end up at the bottom of the ocean by daring to say something negative about her, so
I will say just do better.
Brian - the Naked Gun I thought this picture was decent. Yes, as Brian points out, it had a few weak plot points. For instance, even though Kyle's husband was sealed with a code in accordance to International law, it is also the practice of
US Customs that all shipments coming into the country are run through x-ray. The explosives would have been discovered at that
point. Despite all the weak points, I thought the picture was well shot and exciting. My only criticism for director Robert Schwenkte is the attempted twist of the picture should have come sooner, when Kyle first
lashed out against the plane. There was no reason for what happened to have happened as late as it did. It's tough to compare this movie to "Red Eye." Both are thrillers involving a plane trip. However, I enjoyed "Red Eye" a little more, but
honestly, neither of them will make it in my personal DVD collection. I think "Flightplan" is worth seeing. So, there. Benn - Where's the Humanity?
I hate movies that pretend to be realistic and are completely the opposite. Jodie Foster's newest
movie tries real hard to be a thriller in the sky but it takes what was a predictable plot and becomes
the conspiracy theory of theories that only Oliver Stone can love, which I could not so I walked out
of the movie before it was over.