Jodie Foster has managed her career just fine up to this point — the bookend Oscars, the box-office cred, the universal acclaim of her audience and peers — so is it completely off-base to suggest that maybe, just maybe, she's getting a little complacent?

Foster's first above-the-title film role in three years debuts in theaters Friday, but it doesn't appear to be the sort of brash, revelatory performance that will wow critics or mobilize her, shall we say, more selective fan base. In “Flightplan,” she plays a widowed aviation engineer who boards a jumbo jet with her young daughter only to wake up in midflight and find the child missing. Following some Hitchcock-style twists and turns, Foster's mile-high motherly instincts kick into action.

It's a good premise, a provocative premise — just not the kind of premise that's likely to send Foster back to the Oscar podium or challenge her in any meaningful dramatic way. If anything, “Flightplan” bears a strong likeness to Foster's last major feature, the solidly entertaining if artistically inert “Panic Room” (2002). Just look at the promotional artwork for “Flightplan,” dominated by Foster's soft-lit visage: We see motherly terror in her familiar, pointy features, and that raw-vulpine-determination thing she does so splendidly. And done so often before.

In practice, there's nothing wrong with an actor playing it safe from time to time. How tiresome Foster would become if every role served only to feed her appetite for experimentation: A career playing sensitive woodland naifs who talk beautiful gibberish while touching people's faces. She'd be Gary Oldman.

Then again, it would be tragic if she became Harrison Ford, too. He used to be an actor we all respected, anticipated. It wasn't just the fanboy roles, the swashbuckling space jockeys and bullwhip-cracking artifact-hounds; Ford also poked at the envelope, shouldering edgy or odd-shaped projects such as “The Mosquito Coast” (1986) and “Working Girl” (1988).

In retrospect, Ford's fall from movie godhood probably began in 1992, when he swiped the Jack Ryan character from Alec Baldwin (who was a lot better at it) and made those two clunky Tom Clancy spy movies (“Patriot Games” in 1992 and “Clear and Present Danger” in 1994). At that point, Ford's actorly self-image seemed to set in concrete: Dutiful, humorless, a responsible man with a job to do. Even when he makes a comedy, such as the merry misfire “Six Days and Seven Nights” (1998),
all we see is that Jack Ryan stiff, pretending to be someone else.

Judging from Ford's interviews and the sort of movies he makes, it's depressingly obvious that the man has lost all joy for acting.

Clearly, Foster hasn't reached that point yet. Her small but fascinating role in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's war romance “A Very Long Engagement” (2004) is evidence that her exploratory instincts are alive and well.

(Plus, the performance allowed her to dust off her French-language skills, a lifelong passion and her basis of study at Yale.) Maybe what makes Foster's fans panicky is that she simply has other things going on, and has never hesitated to de-prioritize her movie career in favor of other pursuits. Right now that seems to be raising her two sons. Hard to drive the kids to cello practice when you're leaping over crocodiles with Brad Pitt.

Selfishly speaking, it would be nice to see Foster settle into a more productive, balanced tempo, alternating the big paycheck roles with edgier, auteur-driven fare. Nicolas Cage is really good at that — “National Treasure” one week, “Adaptation” the next. No actress — except, perhaps, Nicole Kidman (who was originally slated to star in “Panic Room,” until a knee injury suffered on the set of “Moulin Rouge” forced her to back out) — has been able or willing to achieve this Zenlike harmony. Foster is one of the few with the clout (and talent) to make it happen.

Is it presumptuous to demand these things of Foster? As fans and consumers held in rapture by a dazzling media entity that so often disappoints us, do we not have a stake? Whatever. Just as long as she doesn't play Jack Ryan.