Flightplan

There was promise to this film about a kidnapping on an airplane, but though it's immaculate in its professionalism, it's about as ambitious as a pothead living in his mother's basement. Jodie Foster plays an airplane designer who's just suffered the loss of her husband; taking his body back home to America, she dozes off, wakes up and discovers her daughter missing. And not just missing — nobody believes she ever got on in the first place. Primal fears and feminist issues could have jumped all over this movie, but in the end it's in service of one of those diabolical plots that is so ingenious no human being could ever have dreamed it up, much less pulled it off. Foster does her usual best with some pretty flimsy material and director Robert Schwentke is pleasantly slick in his direction, but neither Schwentke nor the writers are capable of investing the material with anything beyond TV movie resonance. Plus, there's some digital imagery that could have been eliminated by a director with some creativity instead of a desire to show off the money. By the halfway point, you want them to tell you if she's crazy or not; by the climax, you'll eat those words when they give you the answer. And with the running around, screaming and useless name checking of 9/11 paranoia, you wind up just as angry and frustrated as the long-suffering protagonist. Extras include a lengthy but not especially analytical "making of" doc, a shorter one on the design of the elaborate airplane set, and a game but shallow commentary by the director. (Buena Vista)