I waited until the movie Flightplan was in DVD. I waited largely because I was honoring the protestations of flight crews that the movie made them villains.
Damn those #$%% airline personnel unions.
First of all, the movie was a top flight action film. Now I recommend it to people who like action films. Don't miss it.
Second, movies are...
Second, movies are fiction; they don’t result in behavioral
consequences. I’ve said it hundreds of times before, if movies or any
other medium could change behavior, positively or negatively, then we
would be swamped with goody-goody movies, goody-goody TV and every
imaginable goody-goodiness media. Portraying flight crews as the bad guys can’t have
harmful effects. Think how often cops, nurses and pharmaceutical executives
are portrayed as bad guys. Do people stop calling the police when they need them, do they do background checks on their nurse, do they refuse to take medical drugs when needed? No.
Third, this is a recent genre of action film that is worthy of commentary. The kidnapped-child. The genre has allowed fathers to become vengeful heroes, body guards to become employee heroes and, in this case, a mother to become hysterically motivated to action hero status. I’ve seen more of this kidnapped-child genre on TV, but TV can move faster into a new genre these days than film.
The kidnapped-child genre relates to my adage that you can’t make a successful movie about a subject until the subject is completely dead for 20 years. So, does the recent efflorescence of kidnapped-child movies mean we are reaching the 20 year mark after an earlier child-kidnapping epidemic has been put to rest?
Yes and no. Yes there was a child-kidnapping epidemic in the form of an hysteria that lasted from 1978
to 1996, with a peak in 1985 when 50 trial cases put over 200 innocent people
in prison for satanic child abuse. I called that hysteria at the time, in print,
lost a few friends by speaking the truth, and pointed out that the
hysteria was driven by the fears of the 1970s-1980s women going to work and leaving
their children in child care. I reiterate my positions today.
No, twenty years has not elapsed since the hysteria died down. I believe these films are coming out too soon. That is the real reason that the flight attendants' efforts to suppress this film worked. The film was going to fail anyway in spite of its excellent acting, cinematography and narrative...it is much too soon to think the child-kidnapping hysteria is 20 years past.