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Originally Posted by paleshadow
I saw Flight Plan last night, and I wasn't crazy about it. I actually was a little bored, but I don't want to give anything away. As far as Air Plane thrillers go, I liked Red Eye much better.
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SPOILERS
I thought Red Eye was a b-movie piece of **** trash with not one iota of suspense, good acting, or halfway decent directing. It was as thin as a runway model, as evidenced in it's paltry 75 minute running time once you subtract all credits, and I still want my money back.
Flightplan? Now that's a winner. They actually took a good deal of time to establish mood; paranoid and bleak, claustorphobic and cold. Not only is Jodie Foster so phenomenally talented as an actress that your mind wonders if she's even human, but most of the comparisons to "Hitchcockian thrillers" were dead-on. The screenwriter constructed her character so expertly that I wasn't even sure if she had a child with her or not. She was obviously mentally disturbed from the get-go, so you weren't positive
what was real or not. That first hour was nothing short of brilliant. The exploitation of the common fear of flying lent it more credibility than I expected, especially when the filmmakers had the audacity to include pointed references to the fear of those who are of Middle Eastern descent. After that first hour, it started to become your average thriller (yet still masterful when compared to the other dreck that we're served), but up until that point, it was nothing short of fantastic.
If there was anything bad about it, it was Peter Sarsgaard. The man has no memory to speak of, I swear, because he seemed to be reading lines from cue cards taped to his loafers. His slow, Valley Girl-ish drawl mixed with a forced southern-like charm was the most distracting thing I've seen yet in a movie this year. Not once did I buy into him; when Foster charged at his head with a fire extinguisher, I was convinced that I heard a hollow sound emit from the speakers when his head was struck. He came across as ten pounds of stupid in a five pound bucket.