Flightplan (12)

"This is really silly," says the bitchy, big-lipped air hostess. "This is procedure," says the English captain. "This is just asking for it," says the cynical film hack. Flightplan is preposterous - a concept thriller that trades train for plane to remake The Lady Vanishes with post-9/11 pretensions, pseudo-Panic Room visual trickery and none of Hitchcock or Fincher's cruel wit. The extras praise director Robert Schwentke (of Se7en style German thriller Tattoo) for his handling of tone, but tone is what stops this thriller flying... It needs to have Hitch's sense of mischief; sell you a ticket for a destination you never question because you're too busy having fun. Flightplan takes itself so seriously you can't help poking holes in it.

That isn't to say it's a waste of 90 minutes: Foster's tough-woman-in-peril-schtick struck the box-office motherload and it'll work for you if you share her rising fear when her daughter disappears on an E-474 (an immense fictional plane whose construction is detailed in the exquisitely dull Making Of). The problem is if you're too detached and thriller-savvy - in which case the stacked narrative is all too obvious and you're just waiting for it to crash-land. Your perspective on Foster's predicament may be influenced by your sex, too - as the star observes in interview, "I feel that, in general, under stress situations men don't question their sanity as much as women do."

DVD Extras:

Filmmakers' commentary
Deleted scenes
Five featurettes
11 short films
Games

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