IMDb commenter Paul Pensom does not like the Jodie Foster movie Flightplan (2005):
Man: "You know we're always saying we could use 50 million dollars?
Woman: "Yes."
Man: "Well I have a cunning plan."
Woman: "What's that then?"
Man: "First of all we need to find an aeronautics engineer working in a foreign country, with a child, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the layout of a particular long-haul plane."
Woman: "Why's that?"
Man: "Well then, you see, we murder her spouse, in such a way as it looks like an accident."
Woman: "What for?"
Man (exasperated): "Well then of course, we bribe the mortuary assistant at the hospital into letting us place explosives inside the casket."
Woman: "But why?"
Man: "I'm coming to that. Then we wait until the woman decides to return the the U.S."
Woman: "But what if she doesn't?"
Man: "She just will, okay? So anyway, when she decides to return home we find out what flight she's on. Hopefully she is not only placed on the type of plane of which she has encyclopedic knowledge, and flying with the airline of which you're a flight attendant, but also on the same flight as her dead husband's casket. Are you following?"
Woman: "I think so."
Man:"Good, we're nearly there. Then all we need to do is falsify the checking-in information to remove all record of her daughter, make sure she gets on the plane half an hour before everybody else, ensure there is a row of empty seats behind her and get me on the flight, sitting nearby."
Woman: "And then?"
Man (laughing): "Now this the cunning part. She takes the empty seats, allowing her daughter to sit in the aisle seat, then when she goes to sleep, all I have to do is steal a food trolley, stuff the daughter into it and hide her in the hold. Oh, and did I mention that we must ensure that nobody on the entire plane sees the daughter?"
Woman: "Isn't this getting a little farfetched?"
Man (angry): "What d'you mean? It's a great plan! All I have to do then is remove the child's boarding pass from wherever the mother is keeping it without waking her, assist her search for the missing child in the guise of an Air Marshal, convince the captain that the woman is mad and that the child died with her father (through a forged note from the mortician), and wait for the mother to escape from my custody.
Woman: "Escape, why?"
Man: "Because the casket can only be unlocked by her, so once she's unlocked it I can set the timer on the explosives. From there we're home and dry. I merely have to recapture her, convince the captain that she's actually not mad but a hijacker who wants 50 million dollars and give the Captain our account number, asking him to ensure the money is paid straight in. Oh, Then we land, everybody gets off the plane, I shoot the mother and blow up the daughter and nobody is any the wiser. We walk away with a cool 50 million. Simple eh?"
Pensom is right about all this but the genius of the movie is that it keeps rollicking along in spite of the absurdity of all these complications. The producers are banking on audiences hating air travel so much they will believe almost any bad thing associated with it.
