Flightplan (2005)
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter.
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What critics compared Flightplan to
This flick also recalls the likewise forgettable "Red Eye" and "Flightplan"—just add popcorn for a mini-film fest of rentable, plane-related entertainment that's not as smart or scary as you hope.
It's risible nonsense, blessed with plot holes that make the fractures in the fuselage seem insignificant, and not a patch on Wes Craven's Red Eye (or indeed Robert Schwentke's Flightplan ), which did these upmarket airborne B-movie thrills with far more wit and panache.
Try 2005's " Flightplan ," 2005's " Red Eye ," or even 2006's " Snakes on a Plane ," and treat this disappointing entry as the afterthought it finally becomes.
Echoing the premise of 2005’s Flightplan and countless Agatha Christie whodunits, Non-Stop is nothing less than exhilarating in the execution of its first two acts.
But the script, credited to tyro scribes John W. Richardson, Chris Roach and Ryan Engle, also bears more than a glancing resemblance to 2005’s “Flightplan,” in which Jodie Foster’s grieving widow becomes convinced that someone has kidnapped her young daughter in the middle of a transatlantic jumbo-jet flight.
In terms of danger-on-a-plane scenarios it’s superior to “Flightplan” and “Turbulence” but not as goofily entertaining as “Red Eye,” “Air Force One” or even “Con Air.”
And then “Fractured” becomes a riff on “The Lady Vanishes” (or “Flightplan” for modern audiences), in which we have to decide if Ray is crazy or if everyone at the hospital is conspiring to make him so.
Whereas a film like “Flightplan” merely elevated Alfred Hitchcock’s locomotive mystery onto an airplane, “Fractured” sews the story into the knotted fabric of the American healthcare system, a curious wrinkle that helps to endow some (very) familiar beats with a fresh palette of anxieties.
Unfolding like Jodie Foster’s “Flightplan” (but in a hospital) Ray enlists law enforcement to investigate the shady hospital who insists Ray came in for a head related injury following a car accident (don’t they always?)
Directed by Robert Schwentke (Flightplan, The Time Traveler's Wife), Red has the cool, swaggering vibe of an action movie where the actors and the audience know that nothing is really on the line.
But despite that and a winning concept — that somebody, maybe in government, is trying to kill off aged, retired CIA assassins — director Robert “Flightplan” Schwentke never lets this one achieve takeoff.
The action-comedy genre isn't easy (just look at "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" for a recent failure) and it's a credit to the writers and director Robert Schwentke ("Flightplan") that they nail (and sustain) the tone throughout (of course, when you've got Helen Mirren behind a mounted machine gun how can you fail?).
Director Robert Schwentke (“Flightplan,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife”) favors smooth, stylized action over gritty, graphic violence, and he stages some cheerfully over-the-top scenarios.
But unlike the similarly star-stuffed “Oceans” series, director Robert Schwentke (“Flightplan”) never allows his crisply plotted film, loosely based on a graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, to descend into an out-of-control actors’ frat party.
The director here is Robert Schwentke, who did the mediocre The Time Traveler’s Wife and the more involving Flightplan.