This review WILL include spoilers.
Got that? Spoilers. That means I will be giving something away that is probably important to the film.
SPOILERS. So watch out.

"""Flightplan" " " is the latest action film to be released for the summer, riding the coattails of various other films that have come and gone. There are/were hopes that this would be the big blockbuster that the others didn't quite make it to.
I don't know if it will get that far.
"FLIGHTPLAN" is a fairly confusing film that throws a massive monkey wrench into the works in the third act and then tries to correct all the problems in it's fourth act. It does not quite do it.
Foster plays an American engineer working in Berlin who has to return to America to bury her husband after he commits suicide by jumping off the roof of their apartment building.
We first see her walking the snowy streets of Berlin talking and laughing with her husband. The dead one, and no this is not another "Ghost". What this scene is supposed to do is tickle the mind of the viewer into thinking Foster's
Kyle Pratt is not just a grieving widow but that she is also delusional, as evidenced by her claims to have lost her daughter during flight home.
Foster reprises her roll as the tough mother (and yes, you can take that two ways) just as she did in "Panic Room". And while she does a great job, I had some problems with the film, mostly the script.
The writers spent the first part of the movie trying to convince the viewer, us folks out in the audience, that Julia never existed. But, Peter Dowling and Billy Ray's script never makes us doubt Forster is nothing more then a distraught mother searching for her kid.
Even aside from the knowing winks and looks that pass between the flight crew, we never really think that Pratt is nuts. We think of child molesters, kidnappers, drug dealers, hijackers or any number of other things, but we never think Pratt is a nut job.

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The third act reveals who the evil guy is, even if you never figured it out near the start and tells us what the ultimate plan is.

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A simple ransom plot, but not against Pratt; it is against the airline. After placing bombs smuggled aboard in the coffin, the bad guy demands $50 Million to be placed in a numbered account.
All of this would have worked, expect for a couple of little things. Mainly, Foster getting to the Captain and finding out what is really happening. Once this happens the entire movie started to fall apart for me.
Why didn't they just keep her cuffed to the chair? She is in the back of the plane; no one is coming near her. Even as a last resort they could have knocked her out, or forced her to simply lie down while everything is being taken care of.
The entire operation depended too much on "She needs to do this" for their plan to work. And in a film like this, that simply does not work.
When the final revelation is made of who is who, it simply did not impress me because by that time I just didn't care.
Don't get me wrong; I love Jodie Foster as an actress. Not enough to shoot at the leader of a free nation, but I have seldom missed one of her movies. But her acting, no matter how good won't make up for a lousy story.
In the whole film there were only two characters worth watching, ones who actually had some sort of emotional investment in the character they played and that was Foster and the Airline Captain, played with style and finesse by Sean Bean.
I just was not as impressed as I had hoped to be. I think I would rather watch RED EYE again.