Ninja_Squirrel
Regular
I just saw the new Jodie Foster movie Flightplan. It was good, but a little heavier on the drama and lighter on the excitement than I was expecting.
I read Roger Ebert's review. He gave it 3.5 stars. I would give it more like 2.5 or 3.
I was really surprised Ebert said the plot was "airtight," especially since both he and his reviewing partner Richard Roeper admit that you ask yourself some questions about the plot "after you leave the theater." I did the same and thought of several plot holes, but one of those holes I thought of before the movie was completely over.
If any of you have seen it, did you spot any plots holes too?
SPOILERS
1) Much of the secret plan of the two bad guys depends on Kyle (Jodie Foster's character) looking like she's crazy. Part of the her looking crazy was no one believing that she had a daughter on board at all. Not only was the manifest and the ticket tampered with, but the surrounding passengers and flight attendants don't remember Kyle being with a child. If at least one flight attendant and/or at least one passenger had said they remembered Kyle's daughter, it would have blown apart the plan to make her look delusional from grief. Just one witness could give some credibility to what she was saying.
2) The air marshall tries to make some kind of social statement about society, saying how little people care. He said that all it took was grabbing the girl and putting her in a food cart, and no one even noticed. I get the feeling the girl also had to be drugged to be handled that far without waking up. I find it hard to believe that drugging her, picking her up, and stuffing in her in a food cart would go unnoticed by other crew or passengers. If just one person noticed any of those moments, the plan would have been ruined.
3) The bad guys would not have needed to unload the girl from the food cart on one of the passenger levels, possibly attracting attention. They could have put the food cart in the elevator, sent it down, and then unloaded the girl from the cargo area. However, the air marshall should not have had the time or opportunity to sneak away into the cargo area for that purpose. Neither should the flight attendant who was working with him. Considering the girl would have to have been carried (as dead weight) down the ladder to the recession in the tail, it is more likely it was the AM (althought not impossible it was the FA), and I would think he'd need to stay put in the passenger cabin the whole time.
4) Eventually, the air marshall steps up his scheme by convincing the captain that Kyle is a hijacker claiming that explosives are on the plane. The captain was already skeptical when Kyle claimed her daughter could be missing. When the daughter didn't show up but the false evidence that the daughter died with the father did come out, he was fairly well convinced that she was delusional from grief. Why was he so quickly convinced that this crazy lady could conceivably be a hijacker. Granted, she knew a lot about the plane and was able to manipulate some of its electronics, but just the nature of her profession explains that much away. It's her motive that should immediately be in question, considering her lack of credibility at that point.
5) In her home in Germany, before boarding the plane, Kyle sees two men in a window across the street looking in her daugher's window. On the plane, she suspects that two of the Arab passengers are those two men, and therefore, they must be behind her daughter's abduction. By the end of the movie, it's clear that that was a red herring. However, it's almost *too* intentional of a red herring. If the men in the window weren't the two men on the plane, then who were the two creepy guys looking in the window??? I guess they could have been accomplices of the air marshall & flight attendant, but it's never explained.
Several times near the end, when what had happened to Kyle's daugher was explained, I kept expecting flashbacks that would support the explanations, but the flashbacks didn't happen. I get the feeling that such flashbacks may have been left out intentionally because they may not have been credible. For instance, it would have been hard to pull off a flashback in which the girl is drugged and stuffed in a cart in front of surrounding passengers without alerting crew or passengers and without waking the girl's own mother sleeping right across from her. I think that might have looked forced.
I don't know, maybe I'm being too picky. It might be somewhat plausible everything happening the way the characters portrayed, but the air marshall's plan just looks fragile. Any one little thing gone wrong would have ruined it. They would have to have been super prepared and super stealthy.
Still a good movie with an excellent performance by Jodie Foster. A couple random observations: Peter Sarsgaard (who played the air marshall) has some really lazy eyelids. The whole time he looked like he was drugged up or mega-drowsy. And, Sean Bean (who played the captain) has a problem with accidentally spitting while he talks. He spit when he was arguing with Kyle in a galley, and he spit at the end of the movie when he apologized to Kyle. I guess they digitally removed his saliva when he played Boromir in Lord of the Rings.
I read Roger Ebert's review. He gave it 3.5 stars. I would give it more like 2.5 or 3.
I was really surprised Ebert said the plot was "airtight," especially since both he and his reviewing partner Richard Roeper admit that you ask yourself some questions about the plot "after you leave the theater." I did the same and thought of several plot holes, but one of those holes I thought of before the movie was completely over.
If any of you have seen it, did you spot any plots holes too?
SPOILERS
1) Much of the secret plan of the two bad guys depends on Kyle (Jodie Foster's character) looking like she's crazy. Part of the her looking crazy was no one believing that she had a daughter on board at all. Not only was the manifest and the ticket tampered with, but the surrounding passengers and flight attendants don't remember Kyle being with a child. If at least one flight attendant and/or at least one passenger had said they remembered Kyle's daughter, it would have blown apart the plan to make her look delusional from grief. Just one witness could give some credibility to what she was saying.
2) The air marshall tries to make some kind of social statement about society, saying how little people care. He said that all it took was grabbing the girl and putting her in a food cart, and no one even noticed. I get the feeling the girl also had to be drugged to be handled that far without waking up. I find it hard to believe that drugging her, picking her up, and stuffing in her in a food cart would go unnoticed by other crew or passengers. If just one person noticed any of those moments, the plan would have been ruined.
3) The bad guys would not have needed to unload the girl from the food cart on one of the passenger levels, possibly attracting attention. They could have put the food cart in the elevator, sent it down, and then unloaded the girl from the cargo area. However, the air marshall should not have had the time or opportunity to sneak away into the cargo area for that purpose. Neither should the flight attendant who was working with him. Considering the girl would have to have been carried (as dead weight) down the ladder to the recession in the tail, it is more likely it was the AM (althought not impossible it was the FA), and I would think he'd need to stay put in the passenger cabin the whole time.
4) Eventually, the air marshall steps up his scheme by convincing the captain that Kyle is a hijacker claiming that explosives are on the plane. The captain was already skeptical when Kyle claimed her daughter could be missing. When the daughter didn't show up but the false evidence that the daughter died with the father did come out, he was fairly well convinced that she was delusional from grief. Why was he so quickly convinced that this crazy lady could conceivably be a hijacker. Granted, she knew a lot about the plane and was able to manipulate some of its electronics, but just the nature of her profession explains that much away. It's her motive that should immediately be in question, considering her lack of credibility at that point.
5) In her home in Germany, before boarding the plane, Kyle sees two men in a window across the street looking in her daugher's window. On the plane, she suspects that two of the Arab passengers are those two men, and therefore, they must be behind her daughter's abduction. By the end of the movie, it's clear that that was a red herring. However, it's almost *too* intentional of a red herring. If the men in the window weren't the two men on the plane, then who were the two creepy guys looking in the window??? I guess they could have been accomplices of the air marshall & flight attendant, but it's never explained.
Several times near the end, when what had happened to Kyle's daugher was explained, I kept expecting flashbacks that would support the explanations, but the flashbacks didn't happen. I get the feeling that such flashbacks may have been left out intentionally because they may not have been credible. For instance, it would have been hard to pull off a flashback in which the girl is drugged and stuffed in a cart in front of surrounding passengers without alerting crew or passengers and without waking the girl's own mother sleeping right across from her. I think that might have looked forced.
I don't know, maybe I'm being too picky. It might be somewhat plausible everything happening the way the characters portrayed, but the air marshall's plan just looks fragile. Any one little thing gone wrong would have ruined it. They would have to have been super prepared and super stealthy.
Still a good movie with an excellent performance by Jodie Foster. A couple random observations: Peter Sarsgaard (who played the air marshall) has some really lazy eyelids. The whole time he looked like he was drugged up or mega-drowsy. And, Sean Bean (who played the captain) has a problem with accidentally spitting while he talks. He spit when he was arguing with Kyle in a galley, and he spit at the end of the movie when he apologized to Kyle. I guess they digitally removed his saliva when he played Boromir in Lord of the Rings.
