Flightplan DVD: Crash-landing into a sea of political correctness
By Bill Lalor
Posted On February 01, 2006
This weekend, I experienced the self-inflicted misfortune of renting the Flightplan DVD. I won’t venture a review as such, aside from this: By the film’s end you may find yourself wishing the plane will simply crash into a mountain, or for our missing kid (see below) to emerge from the cargo hold and parachute into oblivion – whichever option would faster spare the audience from the eye-scratching, minute-by-minute tedium of it all. Neither of those things happen, though, so consider yourself warned.
Fortunately the film does offer some significance, if mostly for the wrong reasons. As gleaned from the promos, we find the bereaved Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) might be insane but she might also have misplaced her young daughter, Julia, aboard a ¾-full, Munich-to-New York jumbo jet. Kyle’s likeable enough in the troubled, Clarice Sterling sense but we’re told to question whether Julia is indeed missing or instead a continued earthly existence imagined only with the aid of Kyle’s flittering psychosis. Mom’s been having a hard time of it, what with her post-mortem conversations with dad, who’s resting in a coffin in the cargo hold.
As the missing kid angst and suffocating lack of alternatives wear on, a reasonable part of us wants to believe Kyle that her child must be around here somewhere. And that part of us, having been introduced at boarding to four young Arab-looking men speaking with the accents that aren’t Yiddish, is reminded those gentlemen are seated together, a few rows from where Kyle fell asleep and lost the kid. They’re vaguely agitated, unsettlingly so if “connecting the dots” means anything these days, and some ham-handed directorial maneuvering baits us into wondering something that sensitive Americans, 9/11 be damned, are supposed to have banished away to shame’s hinterlands: perhaps these fellows were involved with the girl’s disappearance. At Kyle’s misguided behest they’re eventually interrogated by a federal air marshal, and accosted by – wouldn’t you know – a corn-fed, red state-looking white jerk to underscore the next point, which is...
…profiler guilt! Director Robert Schwentke proceeds to reprimand the ignorant among us for taking his bait, disclosing that our hapless, 20- or 30-something Arab men (seated together and casting those darting glances, the leader of whom wears a beard, etc.) are merely on a wholesome trans-Atlantic business trip. They just want to be left alone! – and the real culprit is whitey, one of whom promises to blow up the Aerobus and incinerate poor Julia if he doesn’t get his cash money. (Spark Notes: Imagine Panic Room, except set on a really big plane.) The last bit of moralizing comes at the bitter end, with a saccharine gesture of goodwill on the part of our peace loving, bearded Arabic non-terrorist friend who, again, just wants to be left alone. Nee Cat Stevens must’ve been misty-eyed.
It was with an admixture of disgust and boredom that I switched to Arena Football before closing credits, but someone should double-check this apology didn’t find its way in: to all Arabs around the globe on behalf of those Americans who are intent on facing facts…. Then again, why bother? Perusing some of the reviews (e.g., the Village Voice: “there's nothing quite so fickle as paranoia, and…some people are never more persuasive than when they're out of their minds”), it’s apparent to me the blue state media was anxious to take that last step, articulating of some post-9/11, new malaise as a national gesture of apology. It’s the perfect one-two combination for leftist propaganda.
As I said, I won’t pretend to be a film critic. But if you’ve thought about renting Flightplan for its promised cinematic gusto, don’t bother. Jodie Foster does her darndest, but here she descends (tray tables up!) toward Meredith Baxter-Birney Land, and I can only hope Ms. Foster is considering new representation. Your 93 minutes are better wasted on Sex in the City re-runs or perhaps (and ironies aside) watching A&E's Flight 93.On the other hand, if you’re apt to suspect that any real terrorist threat from Arab looking gents is a paranoid fantasy of the Weekly Standard and Tom Tancredo, and assuming you’re willing to overlook hefty cinematic demerits for the sake of some anti-Bush intonations (you saw Fahrenheit, right?), I highly recommend this film.
Bill Lalor is an attorney in Manhattan and the proprietor of this fine website.
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