'Flightplan' fly's a little low

Jodie Foster is panicking in an enclosed space again, but this time she's not trying to hide from burglars.

"Flightplan" is a self-proclaimed psychological thriller that starts slow and barely picks up enough speed to leave the ground. Foster plays Kyle, a recently widowed mother, and in doing so, further pigeonholes herself into the role of a frantic single parent.

The film winds along, planting obviously misleading clues, which appear to build up to an astonishing ending.

The payoff, unfortunately, never comes.

The film begins in Berlin, Germany, where Kyle's husband falls off the roof of their apartment building. Why he was up there in the first place is never addressed but as a result, Kyle and her daughter Julia, played by Marlene Lawston, must take a transatlantic flight to Long Island for the burial.

They just happen to be fly on the maiden voyage of a state-of-the-art 747 Kyle helped design. After falling asleep mid-flight, Kyle awakens to find Julia missing.

For almost an hour, Kyle runs back and forth down the isles searching for her missing daughter then repeats the cycle with varying degrees of hysteria and assistance.

She investigates the myriad flight decks and bathrooms and beseeches the flight crew to make an announcement about the missing girl. Unfortunately, the crew finds no record of Julia in the passenger manifest and Kyle cannot find Julia's backpack or boarding pass.

There are only two possibilities for Kyle to realize. She is either delirious or someone has kidnapped her daughter in an elaborate conspiracy. It doesn't take a decoder ring to decipher the route the film will take.

After being assured this is a thriller by eerie, suspenseful music in the tedious first half, the movie picks up speed, instilling a decent amount of anxiety and providing a few thrills.

Despite notable potential, "Flightplan" still falls short of the eminence it could have achieved. The underlying theme of the plot could have been taken in more promising directions.

The cinematography is well done, but this is nothing new to most modern films. Many dynamic shots create a claustrophobic environment in the fuselage and long sweeping shots keep the space continuous and intimate.

While writing an ending is the most difficult part of a script, it seems that novice writers Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray opted for the easy way out rather than exploring other potentially creative avenues. There is no "ah ha" moment that viewers have come to anticipate in a thriller of this sort.

German-born director Robert Schwentke is a stranger to the mainstream, having directed only three previous underground works: a short film called "Heaven!," "Tattoo," a drama/thriller which won several awards in obscure film festivals, and a German comedy entitled "Eierdiebe."

"Flightplan" is the first film Schwentke directed without also writing the script. Based on how his other works were received, perhaps Schwentke should go back to writing his own material for independent film companies where his creativity could come to light without being hampered by the executives of the studio system.

This film is definitely not worth seeing in theaters and probably not even worth renting. There are simply too many generic thrillers cluttering the genre. The "thriller" atmosphere is all-too-familiar and there isn't enough suspense to keep the film exciting.