Flightplan (2005)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Warning: I’m going to give away some spoilers. I’m not giving away the ending and I’m certainly not giving away that much. However, if you’re not into hearing too many details, don’t read this review just yet.


I remember seeing the coming attractions for flight plan. Mother and daughter are traveling on a plane. The mother, played by Jodie Foster, falls asleep and awakens to find the daughter missing. Since they’re on a plane and no parachutes are missing, the mother is left to assume that the daughter is still on the plane. That’s about all the trailers revealed.

After seeing the trailers, I had to wonder how they could fill almost two hours of film based on just that. Part of the movie deals with why Kyle (the mother) and Julia (the daughter) are on the plane. It turns out that the father died, apparently having killed himself by jumping off of the roof of an apartment building. The bulk of it has to do with what exactly happened.

This is why I’m warning you about the spoilers. I can’t really write an honest review without giving away at least some of the details. For starters, the insanity card is played way too early to be what really happened. Even though you know she’s not crazy, you have to wonder just a little bit. After Kyle discovers Julia missing, she finds (the hard way) out who the air marshal is. The air marshal later informs Kyle that she’s actually transporting two coffins, one of which is for her daughter. There’s no record of Julia having been on board. He even provides evidence that she picked up two bodies from the coroner before leaving.

Kyle starts seeing conspiracies everywhere. There are two passengers who are of Middle-Eastern origin who Kyle swears were looking at her from an apartment across the street. Also, she makes a point to tell the captain that two members of the flight crew weren’t exactly trying that hard when everyone was supposed to be looking for Julia.

You do eventually realize that something major is going on. It actually takes a while to figure out what, though. The writers did a good job of stretching out the story. When I first walked out of the theater, I thought to myself that I had just wasted $6.50 of my hard-earned money, but I began to think and I realized that there really was more to it than that. (Which is why I’m withholding a lot of the details.)

There were two major problems that I had with the story. First, I found it very convenient that no one saw Julia get on. Given that we’re talking about a plane with two floors of seats and a good-sized crew, not one person could corroborate that Kyle had gotten on with someone. The second point was that the whole thing with the Middle-Eastern passengers didn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t really mean anything that they happened to be across the street. Plus, they had an alibi for that night, which was never fully checked out.

The entire story seemed to be one of convenience. Things just happened the way that they needed to happen in order for there to be a two-hour movie. What would have happened if someone had been able to definitively say that they saw Julia? I’m going to give the movie four stars. Despite the complaints, the movie was at least entertaining. I’m going to have to see this movie again, just to be able to pick up on things that I didn’t see before. 

IMDb page

Non-Stop (2014)

There’s not a whole lot you can do on an airplane.  With movies, any confined space is going to present problems.  It worked in Exam.  Several people are competing for one job.  When the turn on each other, not being able to leave the room adds to the suspense.  With Non-Stop, you have a similar problem.  Liam Neeson plays an air marshal named Bill Marks.  He’s not the best person.  He drinks.  He argues with people.  He even sneaks a smoke on the lavatory.  The good news is that he gets to travel a lot.  The bad news is that it’s the kind of work that can take a strain on you and your family.

It’s shaping up to be another routine flight when Marks gets a message over the secure network.  The person on the other end threatens to kill passengers at regular intervals unless money is transferred to a specific account.  He initially assumes it to be a joke by the flight’s other air marshal, Jack Hammond.  Hammond denies everything, even showing Marks his own pager.

It doesn’t seem like it would be that easy to pull off something like this.  There are several suspects, though.  Could it be the friendly woman that put forth some effort to sit next to Marks?  It would be too obvious if she took out a pager.  Could it be the angry guy that talks back?  Maybe it’s the token Arab/Muslim guy that everyone’s ready to point a finger at.

It doesn’t help that Marks has no proof.  At best, he looks paranoid.  Things get worse from there, especially when people actually start dying.  You’d think someone would notice a fellow passenger sending texts and turn them in.  The movie manages to go on for 1:46 with the bulk of it in the airplane.  You’d think Marks would be able to see the person given the right vantage point.  It’s never that simple.

That’s the big problem I had with the movie.  The movie is entertaining, but requires a certain suspension of disbelief.  You’d think two trained air marshals could figure out who one person is when the person they’re looking for is typing something on a wireless device.  It shouldn’t take that long to figure everything out.

It’s as if someone got the idea and tried to get it as close to two hours as they could.  It’s interesting to see how the next person will be killed, but that’s not really exciting enough to carry the film.  There is also part of the movie that would be a good candidate for Mythbusters, assuming there’s a way to test it at all.  Knowing that there’s a bomb on board, Marks proposes that they bury the bomb in luggage at a weak point in the plane to direct the blast.  I’m not sure that it would go down as expected.

This is one of those cases where I’m glad it was a free rental from Redbox.  The premise wasn’t enough to get me into the theater, but I did want to watch it.  The movie came off as a little too cliché to me.  If you can get it through Netflix, I’d say go for it.  Just don’t ask too much of the movie.