Flightplan

Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Saarsgard, Sean Bean
In the background: Erika Christensen, Greta Scacchi (lady you have been missing for a while)
Director: Robert Schwentke


Post 9/11, airline security has been obsessed with identifying Red Flags.
The little things that say ‘something’s not right with this picture.’
The signals that say ‘this could be a problem.’

And I just ignored them.
They were there, but I really wanted to believe everything was gonna be ok.

Red Flag #1: The plot
‘Panic Room in the sky’ was the pitch on many of the magazine articles and websites.
If you gotta market one movie by referring to another one, well, it's rarely a great start. Again, my fault. Nobody forced me to go. And it was such cruel, cruel irony that the lady that made the orginal Panic Room good, made this knock-off bad. And I’d never have thunk it. I mean camaaaan, it’s Jodie Foster!

Red Flag #2: The main character
Jodie Foster helped design the super airliner the movie is set in.
Movies where the main character gets trapped in the plane/building/whatever they helped build is usually a bad idea. I’m not gonna go into details, but doesn’t it just fucking worry you that the most well-designed plane in the world has so many trapdoors leading to rather important function like…AVIONICS?!

Red Flag #3: The supporting characters
Let’s see:
Bitchy skeptical flight attendants.
Stoic alright-everybody-there’s-no-need-to-panic British captain.
Stereotypical Middle Eastern dudes who look like they’re gonna hijack the plane.
Stereotypical middle America hicks who hate said Middle Eastern dudes.
Now, I despise politically correctness myself but the last two were bordering on racist. I mean, they put them there making them look dangerous (glaring, skulking, bad goatees) and then try and guilt/blame the audience for thinking they’re bad guys! What the fuck?!

Red Flag #4: The slow mo camera shots
There are all these scenes of Jodie Foster, Peter Saarsgard, hail, everybody running into the camera, face contorted into some horrible I’m-trying-to-run-with-determintaion-towards-the-camera-so-you-can-see-how-determined-I-am grimace.
There are all sortsa ways – good ways – to do slow mo shots.
This is WWF-piledriver slow mo.
This is fucking Six Million Dollar Man slow mo.

They’ve got Sean Bean.
They’ve got Peter Saarsgard.
Jesus Christ they’ve got JODIE FOSTER!

And it still crash and burned.