Flightplan (2005)

Taut thriller directed by Robert Schwentke and later seemingly echoed by Non-Stop (2014). 

The oddly named Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a recently widowed aviation engineer. She is transporting her husband’s body from Germany back to the USA, with her six-year-old daughter Julia, travelling on a plane she herself helped to design. When Kyle wakes from a sleep, her daughter has gone missing. Has she been kidnapped? Or is Kyle delusional? Was Julia ever actually on the flight? And if she was, how can anyone go missing on a plane anyway?

The film is stylishly filmed, with some refreshingly unusual angles and visual treatments. The luxurious-but-claustrophobic environment is expertly rendered in the set design. It avoids cliché, and – unusually – even the slow-motion sequences work. Always watchable, Foster is good in “anxious mother” and “tech expert” modes. 

The ageless Sean Bean plays the pilot. Peter Sarsgaard plays a somewhat creepy air marshall. Greta Scacchi has a brief and slightly odd role as a therapist. 

Unfortunately, there are at least three major plot holes, which could have been avoided with slightly more sophisticated writing. But if you try not to think about them, it’s a hugely enjoyable film that keeps you hooked until the end.

Presumed Innocent (1990)

Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford) is a prosecutor who is charged with the murder of his colleague and mistress Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi).

Adapted from the novel by Scott Turow, this film is directed – slowly and unremarkably – by Alan J. Pakula. The two leads are strong but it’s a little flat overall. Worse than that, the motivation of the killer is muddled and there are loose ends that mean the plot doesn’t really work. 

There’s a greeny/brown, turgid quality to the visuals. Overall, it’s surprisingly workmanlike and unrewarding. Yet somehow it made $200 million.

Would I watch it again? No.

Heat and Dust (1983)

Strangely tepid Merchant Ivory adaptation of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Booker Prize-winning novel of 1975. 

In the 1980s, Anne (Julie Christie) travels from England to India to find out what happened to her great-aunt Olivia (Greta Scacchi) in the 1920s. The story splits so that we switch between both timelines. Olivia, we learn via extensive flashbacks, was married to a civil servant in the British Raj, Douglas Rivers (Christopher Cazenove), but caused scandal when she became involved with an Indian prince. 

The material is potentially interesting, but the treatment is leaden and stilted, despite the best efforts of Scacchi and Christie – who are the best thing about the film by some distance. The thread about civil unrest is not satisfactorily resolved. 

Slow and ponderous scenes lack vitality. Quite a few of them could have been trimmed or cut entirely. Ultimately, not a great deal happens and the drama that we do see is oddly underplayed. For example, we never get to find out how Douglas feels about his wife’s behaviour. In fact, we don't even learn how she feels about it herself. 

Maybe the novel is more exciting, but you’d never know it from sitting through these turgid 133 minutes.

Emma (1996)

Disappointing version of the Jane Austen novel starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the meddling girl who manipulates the affairs of those around her. The incidental music is intrusive, and dialogue that sparkles on the page somehow fails to come alive. At times there is a tired Sunday-evening-TV-drama feel to it. I’m still not sure if Ewan McGregor can act. There are flashes of wit, but not enough of them – baffling given the richness of the source material. It improves as Emma undergoes her character development, but Clueless, which adapts and updates the same story, is a far more entertaining and successful tribute to Austen’s talent.