The cinetrix has spent a fair amount of time this summer criss-crossing New England by bus. And on every trip save the first, the in-transit flick has been the same: Tootsie. Yeah, I know--how random is that? As delightful as I found a young, arch Bill Murray on my first viewing in decades, by the third it was hard not to suspect him of possessing strange, extrafilmic Groundhog Day powers that forced me to watch Hoffman in drag again and again and again. [Cue "I Got You, Babe."]
Until Friday, which is when the bus powers that be broke off the 2005 Jodie Foster flick Flightplan. Nice to know that other forms of transportation have no compunction about showing movies in which things go terribly, terribly wrong for their airborne compatriots. I now fully expect to see Speed on my next flight.
My, what a solid little thriller, as tightly knit together as one of Foster's monochromatic Armani separates. Its taut plot and precisely martialed action were exactly the palliatives the cinetrix needed to cure her post-Pirates bloat. Foster is the wire mommy we all secretly want and fear, a supremely competent aeronautics engineer whose daughter goes missing during a transatlantic flight aboard a craft she helped design. Taking part in the hide-and-seek at 30,000 feet: a sinister flight attendant, a sardonic air marshall [Oh, Sarsgaard....], an upstanding captain [When did Sean Bean get so old? Wasn't it only yesterday he was skulking about in Stormy Monday?], and an outraged Arab passenger under suspicion. Oh, yes, and a honking huge double-decker airplane that rivals any celluloid Manhattan starter apartment for sheer ridiculousness of scale.
Sure, Flightplan borrows plot points from The Lady Vanishes and Madeline L'Engle's The Arm of the Starfish, but oh so deftly. Save a few cheeseball lines at the end, this is precisely the well-machined thriller that's in increasingly short supply. Take that, Verbinski!
[The cinetrix realizes she's late to the party, but will I like Panic Room as much as I did this one? Please advise in the comments. And while you're there, your thoughts on whether Red Eye is also worth a whirl while I'm on a terror in the skies tip.]
