I saw Flightplan over the weekend and I can’t figure out what all the fuss is about. Look, it’s a convoluted psychological thriller (that’s the polite way of saying a thriller without a lot of action) that is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours. I thought Jodie Foster did a good job of playing a mother driven past the breaking point by the death of her husband and the kidnapping of her daughter, and Sean Bean did his usual good job playing the captain of the plane she was on. Given that the discussion will contain spoilers, I’m hiding it behind the extended entry feature, unless you come here via a link to the post itself, in which case if you don’t want the thrill to be spoiled, read no further.
OK, now we can talk freely. First, Debbie Schlussel savaged the movie (in part) for having a red herring consisting of a group of Muslim men on board the flight who the movie hints are terrorists. The problem with this is as a red herring isn’t Ms. Schlussel’s complaint that it makes you question “your suspicions of Arab Muslims, to think you are unfair and prejudiced” but the impracticality of it — Jodie Foster’s character simply stops as she’s running around the plane looking for her daugher and accuses them of taking her daughter without offering any possible motive. And it does make you think about the central puzzle of the movie – why kidnap someone on an airplane?
But her complaints about the depiction of an air marshal and a stewardess as the evil doers — they aren’t terrorists, they’re old fashioned criminals of the murder, kidnap, and extortionist kind — has stirred up stewardesses and their unions enough that flight attendents and their unions are calling for a boycot of the movie. On the one hand, I do sympathize with flight attendants and air marshals complaints, but it is a movie after all. And in one sense, the movie validates their trustworthyness since you aren’t expected to expect their betrayel. Yes, during the 9-11 hijackings the flight crews were heroes, and I’d love to see more movies about that, but does that mean we can’t ever have movie where any flight attendent is less than perfect? I think the real test is how a particular group is routinely portrayed by the media, not on a one time basis.
How thrilling would a movies be if the only bad people in them were clearly criminals at the beginning of the movie? Frankly, on a moral basis I think The Italian Job is worse because your sympathies are with a criminal gang as opposed to Flightplan where you are rooting for a widow over a seriously evil criminal — you just don’t know who the bad guy is until near the end of the movie. And while I agree with David Ross at Libertas that there are real world consequences to media stereotypes, I don’t think a single film rises to the level of stereotype.
