Flightplan, the 2005 mystery thriller starring Sean Bean and Jodie Foster, is leaving Netflix this month. Available to watch until Tuesday 27 January, the noughties movie was directed by Robert Schwentke, the German filmmaker behind The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) and Red (2010).
Described as "a heart-stopping thriller" by CNN.com, Flightplan follows American aircraft engineer Kyle Pratt (Foster), a woman struggling with the sudden loss of her husband, David (John Benjamin Hickey). Faced with bringing David's body back to the US, Kyle and her six-year-old daughter, Julia (Marlene Lawston), board a double-decker plane in Berlin, where a living nightmare unfolds.
After taking a brief nap, Kyle wakes to find her daughter missing, and even worse, the flight attendants have no record of her boarding the plane in the first place. Determined to find her child against all odds, Kyle launches her own investigation mid-flight, uncovering a conspiracy in the process.
Rounding out the cast, Peter Sarsgaard plays air marshal Gene Carson, while Sean Bean appears as the plane's pilot, Captain Marcus Rich. Kate Beahan, Matt Bomer, Amanda Brooks, Greta Scacchi and Erika Christensen also star.
A film which garnered mixed reviews, Flightplan holds a score of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the action and Foster's performance, while criticising the film's third and final act.
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"The care and craft exhibited by director Robert Schwentke in Flightplan is largely undone by a script that self-destructs in the third act of an otherwise well-made thriller," remarked Variety.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post wrote: "Succeeds admirably, both as a sophisticated psychological thriller and as an example of, if not great art, then superb craftsmanship."
Likewise, in our review, we noted: "For the first hour or so, the movie is an enjoyable psychological thriller mystery which is a pleasure to watch unfold. However, it does a very poor job of unfolding after a certain point, taking away any element of thoughtfulness and expecting the audience to overlook a number of unexplained holes in the plot."
Revealing what drew her to the project, Foster told Total Film that she was fascinated by the notion that grief could drive someone to question their own sanity. "That was totally what I was drawn to in the film. It was really that one scene where I read it and was like, 'I gotta make this movie,'" she explained.
"It was originally written for a man, and when I got to that scene, I said, 'This is not a man's scene! This is so not right!' Because when he loses his daughter and goes through all this, I just didn't believe that man would ever question his sanity. He'd point his finger and say, 'You did it!' But he wouldn't say, 'Oh… Maybe I did it?' Men point outwards, they don't destroy themselves."
Flightplan is available to stream on Netflix until 27 January.
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