Flightplan review
My rating: 6/10
Flightplan poster (Image source: http://movie.douban.com/photos/photo/1186426020/)
Kyle Pratt’s husband just committed suicide. So she decided to go back the U.S. with her daughter, Julia, and her husband’s body as soon as she could. But the death of father made Julia anxious, and didn’t dare to sleep alone or even walk out of the room. After a long persuasion, Julia agreed to take the flight. They were the first pair of passengers aboard. And Kyle took Julia to the last row to lie down since there wasn’t anybody sitting. Kyle fell asleep, deeply, after taken some tranquilizer pills, which were used to help her out of her husband’s death. Hours later, when Kyle opened eyes, she found Julia wasn’t there. She searched the entire cabin and there wasn’t any clue. Kyle immediately requested to meet the captain but was refused. An air security, Carson, heard about the thing, and helped to ask the captain. With Carson’s help, they quickly turned the plane upside down, but still couldn’t find Julia. The captain checked the passenger list, and found there wasn’t a passenger on board named Julia.
Meanwhile, a fax from the hospital that took care of Mr. Pratt’s body said that Mr. Pratt took Julia to suicide together last week. So, unsurprisingly, people started to think Kyle was having illusions due to the tragedy. But Kyle knew she wasn’t crazy and believed that Julia was still on board. Having rich experiences with airplanes as an aircraft engineer, Kyle started to search without permission secretly….
This movie is good at mystifying, audiences can get confused whether Kyle is having some mental problems or not since all the evidence says Julia had died. But the most impressive part of the movie to me was the scene Kyle accusing two Arabian passengers of kidnapping and terrorism. It’s understandable that a mother who lost child to get skeptical. But the identity of objects here is very controversial. I even felt angry when Kyle did that because everybody around started to whisper. Where a person come from should not be one of the factors to judge if the person is reliable and honest, in this case, the guy’s look made him look guilty for most Americans. This is unfair and sad, but true in life.
When the thing turned out to be a happy ending, Kyle accidentally dropped her bag on the floor in the airport, the Arabian that she accused came and picked up the bag for her. Kyle didn’t say anything, but the eye contact they made told everything – understanding.
The movie overall is very warm. Passengers agreed to help to search Julia at the beginning, but when the existence of Julia became mysterious, they started to be impatient. That might be human nature, but the success of finding Julia made everybody respect the great mother.
Flightplan trailer (Source: YouTube/George Lewis)