Reviews

My wife recently had surgery with a 6 week recovery, and since she loves Hitchcock, I got her about 45 of The Master's films on DVD. We're about one-third of the way through, and we happened to see the Hitchcock film referenced under Movie Connections for Flight Plan just last night. If you know the one I mean, you'll appreciate the homage. I don't think I'm spoiling anything here, since it is featured prominently in all the commercials I have seen for Flight Plan.

That said, even Hitchcock said he was dissatisfied with the false flashback opening of Stage Fright (not the movie referenced here), so I think a few plot holes can be forgiven in Flight Plan, when the end result is a stylishly done thriller.

I judge how effective a thriller is by how deep my wife's fingerprints are imprinted on my arm. So I'd have to give this a 5 out of a possible 5 fingerprints.

Sure, you can find flaws with just about any movie if you look deep enough, but what ever happened to plunking down your money, getting some popcorn and just enjoying the flick? The performances were uniformly good, with enough ambiguity to keep you guessing. The limitations of the "locked room" genre were overcome by a combination of pacing and camera angles, much as Hitchcock employed in "Dial M for Murder," a classic "locked room" mystery.

Sure, you could argue that this was "Panic Room at 36,000 Feet" but I say anything that gives us more Jodie Foster is well worth it.

My wife and I enjoyed this movie thoroughly. As a previous commenter said, you forget that you are watching a movie, sub-titles notwithstanding. Catalina Sandino Moreno provides a memorable performance, conveying as much in a glance as several lines of dialog would.

Was it just me, or did anyone else catch the irony of the product placement at the end of the movie? There is a scene of Maria in front of an Intel billboard, with the tag line "It's what's inside that counts." Maybe it was just serendipity on the part of the movie makers, but it certainly summarizes the reason for Maria's final choice, as well as the attitude of the people Maria worked for.

And yes, that's really my name ;-)