I am an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes. I have read all
his stories and I mean the ones written by Conan Doyle
not the half baked spinoff’s written by other nondescript
writers.
More about Holmes later, let me get back to him at the end of
this review so that you might get a clear idea of why I alluded
to him in the first place.
Its been a long time since we have had a thriller like ’Flightplan’
I mean a thriller in its true sense rather than the nonsense we
were subjected to in ’The Forgotten’.
The movie is about Kyle Pratt (played by Jodie Foster) who is leaving
her job as an aeronautical engineer in Berlin and is going back to USA
with her 6 yr old daughter. Her husband fell to his death from the
roof of their apartment block (’’He fell, he did not jump’’) and she
is going back home to bury him there.
They board a plane, which Kyle has been a key part in building, settle
down for the transatlantic flight. Kyle wakes up three hours later and
is unable to locate her daughter.
Her child’s back pack is gone and along with it her boarding pass.
None of the passengers nor the flight crew seem to recall having
seen her at all.
Curiously she is not on the passenger manifest nor seems to have boarded the
flight in Berlin. The on board air marshall (Peter Sarsgaard) and the
captain (Sean Bean) give her the benefit of the doubt and decide to search the
aircraft.
They come up with nothing and raise the hackles of a couple of Arab travellers.
The captain then recieves a message saying that the father and daughter both died
in the accident. So was Kyle hallucinating all the time ? Were the pills she was
taking affecting her memory ? At this point, the opening sequence of the film
plays a key role, where Kyle imagines her husband being with her.
At this point the only thing I wanted to know was whether the daughter really
existed or not. For the answer, of course you will have to see the movie.
Jodie Foster’s last movie ’The Panic Room’ was one similar lines, a woman , her daughter and an enclosed space and Jodie excels at this role as well. She goes from calm to panic to calm again all in one moment and she is the main draw of the movie.
The interior of the plane which is seemingly modelled on one of the new generation planes with 3 decks, full service bar and never before seen luxury options is a great setting and the supporting cast is appropriate.
There are a few minor plot flaws but the plot itself is NOT implausible.It has its
share of thrills but don’t expect the writer to cook up something Hitchcockian.
Now back to Sherlock Holmes again. I forgot which story was it but Holmes says to Watson,
’’After all possibilities have been eliminated, what remains no matter how impossible/improbable must be the truth’’
For avid fans of Sherlock Holmes, the mystery will be clear within the first 30 minutes.
For the rest, please fasten your seat belts.
3 stars out of 5