Flightplan

Review by Richard Lee

Touchstone Home Video / 2005 / 98 Minutes / Rated PG-13
Street Date: January 24, 2006

Specifications:
-DVD-Video
-DVD-9
-Region 1

Aspect Ratio:
-2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen

Audio:
-English Dolby Digital 5.1
-English DTS 5.1
-French Dolby Digital 5.1
-Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles:
-English For The Hearing Impaired
-French
-Spanish
-None

Main Menu:
-Play
-Scene Selection
-Bonus Features
-Set Up
-Sneak Peeks

Bonus Features:
-The In-Flight Movie: the Making Of Flightplan
-Cabin Pressure: Designing The Aalto E-474
-Audio Commentary With Director Robert Schwentke

Two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster plays a character named Kyle, a widow and mother in mourning due to the apparent suicide of her husband. Based in Berlin, Germany, Kyle and her daughter Julia embark on a flight back to America bringing with them the body of the deceased for burial. During the evening flight, the daughter vanishes and Kyle begins a downward spiral into panic and paranoia determined to locate her missing daughter. The fact that sets Kyle apart from your typical passenger, however, is that she happens to be a propulsion engineer who helped design the plane that she is flying in. This gives her the advantage of being acquainted with every nook and cranny and circuitry that make up the spinal cord of the aircraft. Directed like a typical Hitchcockian thriller, the scenario plays out like an extended Twilight Zone episode. Kyle is already in a state of detachment and denial from the death of her husband. The question is posed - is she imagining all that is happening before our eyes? Did her daughter actually board the plane with her? As the viewer, we are literally put in Kyle’s shoes as the passengers and crew deny that Julia was ever on the plane and we can’t help but question Kyle’s sanity as she proceeds to alienate everyone around her.

Jodie Foster is known for her strong female characters and this is no exception. Having graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in real life, it is easy to believe she has the intelligence of an aeronautical engineer and the where-with-all to be as resourceful as her character is called upon to be. Good supporting cast work is provided by, to name a few, Peter Sarsgaard as a Federal Air Marshall, Sean Bean as the plane’s pilot, Kate Beahan as a doubting stewardess, Erika Christensen (sister of Star Wars’ Hayden) as a compassionate stewardess, and making her film debut, Marlene Lawston as Jodie’s daughter Julia. Not to be left unmentioned and playing a crucial role in the movie as well is the aircraft itself - a fictional double-decker design called the E-474. Patterned after an Airbus design currently in construction, this mammoth aircraft is essentially a cruise ship in the air providing many interesting areas and crawlspaces that, though they probably do not really exist for security and practical purposes, make for a tense and suspenseful movie-going experience. 

Picture Quality:

Mostly shot through a blue filter, the overall picture detail was quite soft - my guess is a deliberate move by the director and cinematographer to augment the dark and claustrophobic mood of the aircraft interior and of Kyle’s world slowly collapsing around her. An abundance of black levels provide plenty of deep contrasting with no apparent edge enhancement.

Audio Quality:

This DVD provides a DTS track as well as 5.1 Dolby tracks for English, French, and Spanish. Sweeping tracking, twirling, and encircling camera shots provide the soundtrack’s spatial directionality. Scenes of the aircraft taking off and landing provided intense LFE effects that had the sub-woofers and Buttkickers in my Berkline seats rumbling and shaking giving me the illusion that I was on the plane itself. Later, the low hum of the plane’s engines provided ambience throughout the in-flight scenes. Sequences in the aircraft’s crawlspaces brought out metallic creaks and howls reminiscent of “Titanic” when during the sinking sequence, you could hear the creaking and cracking of the ship’s hull.

Scenes For Demonstration Purposes:

1. (86:00) - Climax In The Nose Cone. 

Bonus Features:

“The In-Flight Movie: The Making Of Flightplan”: A. Security Checkpoint: Story Of A Thriller. B. Captain’s Greeting: Meet The Director. C. Passenger Manifest: Casting The Film. D. Connecting Flights: Post Production. E. Emergency Landing: Visual Effects. (Total - 38:31)

A thorough and all-encompassing documentary on the making of the film with cast and crew interviews - we learn that early script drafts had the hero as a man and his son before producer Brain Grazer had the notion of casting Jodie. We then see cast and crew giving plaudits for director Robert Schwentke on his first big-budget film. Then, it’s Jodie’s turn to receive the praise along with audition footage of Marlene Lawston and Kate Beahan. Post-production work demonstrates the “before” raw footage compared to the “after” final print with visuals, sound effects, and music added. On the music side of things, an in-depth interview with one of today’s top movie composers, James Horner (who in my opinion inherits the baton from his chief influence, the late, great Jerry Goldsmith) is provided. Lastly, we see how miniatures and model work, rather than completely rendered computer-graphics, add to the realism of the Aalto E-474 aircraft as well as a breakdown of the climactic explosion within the plane. 

“Cabin Pressure: Designing the Aalto E-474" (10:10) -
This featurette goes into even more depth regarding all the elements that went into designing and constructing the fictional double-decker jet plane. All interiors were made from scratch with the thought of unique camera angles in mind - this included tracking supports for the steadicam built into the roof to facilitate swift and multi-directional movement throughout the cabin. The production design was so meticulous that even the fictional Aalto airlines promotional ads shown at the beginning of the film had to be cleared for fear of copyright infringement.

“Audio Commentary with Director Robert Schwentke” is provided but should be viewed after watching the movie for the fact that he reveals a few major plot points soon after he begins speaking.

“Sneak Peeks” gives us trailers for “Annapolis”, “The Chronicles Of Narnia”, “proof”, “Shadows In The Sun”, “Everything You Want”, “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, and an ad for various ABC TV series on DVD.