The most striking thing I noticed about the film was it's cunning integration of the opening credits into the action going on behind them. Whether anyone else in the cinema noticed this makes me wonder if it was worth their effort, but presumably some creative artist is going round with that on his c.v. now.
The other thing that struck me was how much Jodie Foster had aged since I last saw her up on the big screen, reminding myself of my rapid ascent into middle age. Let's not even dwell on how young she looked in Candleshoe.
These minor points out of the way, what of the film? The film slowly built up the tension, the opening scenes bringing a sense of foreboding in a well crafted manner. In the process we are introduced to Jodie, an american aircraft engineer and her dead husband, who seemingly fell to his death from the roof of their apartment building in Berlin. Such is her tragic loss, that she imagines him being with her on a walk back to the apartment from the mortuary, a sign of her emotional fragility perhaps, an issue that is played on heavily later in the film. We are also introduced to the daughter back at the apartment, and her aprehension at flying back to america with her mother and father (travelling in cargo) for the funeral.
They are the first to board what appears to be an Airbus A380, but refreshingly no product placement here from Airbus and in scenes reminiscent of Hitchcock's "A Lady Vanishes" (also similiarly replete with plot holes), after Jodie Foster wakes up after a short nap, her daughter is missing, and not even a thorough search of the airplane reveals her whereabouts.
With plots twists and turns a plenty, it transpires that not only did no one see the daughter on the plane, but the departure gate had no record of her, the bording card was missing, and the passenger manifest didn't list her. What appears to be the final clincher on Jodie's delusions is when the captain gets a message back from Berlin to say that not only did her husband die but according to the mortuary he took his daughter with him on the plunge.
So there we were sixty minutes in the film, ready to write the whole thing down to a psychotic episode from the grieving wife, but what's that on the window? A heart drawn in the dust by the daughter just after they boarded the plane? (I told you it was reminiscent of A Lady Vanishes).
Throw in a few dodgy looking arabs, screaming kids, an incredulous sky-marshall, a captain whose patience is wearingly increasingly thin and the most unhelpful flight-attendents you've ever met, and it makes for a tense thriller.
At least, until the last 20 minutes, where it all gets a little silly, but that's Hollywood for you.
