Flightplan


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For the aeronautical term, see Flight plan.
Flightplan
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Produced by Robert DeNozzi
Charles J.D. Schlissel
Brian Grazer
Written by Peter A. Dowling
Billy Ray
Starring Jodie Foster
Peter Sarsgaard
Sean Bean
Erika Christensen
Music by James Horner
Editing by Thom Noble
Distributed by Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s) September 23, 2005
Running time 98 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $50,000,000
Gross revenue $223,387,299

Flightplan is a 2005 thriller film directed by Robert Schwentke and starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen, and Sean Bean. It was released in North America on September 23, 2005, 67 years after The Lady Vanishes, on which it is based. It also seems to borrow from Bunny Lake Is Missing.

Contents

Plot

Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a propulsion engineer based out of Berlin, Germany. Her husband David tragically died from falling off the roof of an avionic manufacturing building, and now Kyle and her six year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are flying home to Long Island to bury him and stay with Kyle's parents. They fly aboard a fictional Elgin E-474 [1], which Kyle helped design. After falling asleep for a few hours, Kyle wakes to find that Juila is missing. After trying to remain calm at first, she begins to panic, and Captain Marcus Rich (Sean Bean) is forced to conduct a search. Kyle walks the aisles, questioning people, but none of her fellow passengers remembers having seen her either. Shockingly, one of the stewardesses calls in to the airport they just departed from, and the gate attendant says that they have no record of Julia boarding the flight. In addition, according to the passenger manifest, Julia's seat is registered empty. When Kyle checks for Julia's boarding pass, it is missing.

Marcus refuses to allow the cargo hold to be searched because he is afraid that the searchers could be hurt if the flight shifted due to turbulence. Both Marcus and the other crew members suspect that Kyle has become unhinged by her husband's recent death, and has imagined bringing her daughter aboard. Faced with the crew's increasing skepticism regarding her daughter's existence, Kyle becomes more and more desperate. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) is ordered by Rich to guard her.

Later on, Marcus receives a wire from the hospital in Berlin where David died. It says that Julia was with him when he fell off, and she also died of internal injuries. Kyle furiously denies that, consistently claiming that she brought Julia aboard. Kyle herself begins to doubt her own sanity, but then she notices the heart Julia had earlier drew on the window by her seat with her finger. Because Kyle helped to design the engines used on the aircraft she is able to make use of her knowledge of the aircraft's layout and escapes to hunt for her daughter. Making her way to the freight deck, she smashes a car windshield looking for Julia, and even opens her late husband's casket. Carson finds her, handcuffs her, and escorts her back to her seat.

Kyle makes one more desperate attempt to convince Carson that Julia is indeed on board the plane and that she needs to search in upon landing. Carson thinks for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain." Instead, he sneaks down into the avionics section in the aircraft's nose, where he first goes to David's coffin and rips the upper mattress, where he removes some small explosives and a detonator. He climbs down past the avionic controls platform and looks down into the base of the nose, where Julia is sleeping, along with her coat and teddy bear that no one could seem to find. He attaches the explosives to the side of the platform and arms them. At this point, it is revealed that Carson and a coroner in Berlin are the true villains. Carson tells the captain that Kyle has told him she is a hijacker and is threatening to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the un-x-rayed casket unless the airline transfers $50,000,000 into a bank account. In fact, the villains had killed Kyle's husband and abducted Julia in order to frame Kyle. After the plane lands, Carson intends to blow up the avionics section, killing the unconscious Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator in her hand.

After making an emergency landing in Goose Bay, Newfoundland, the passengers are evacuated. As the captain starts to debark, Kyle talks to him and realizes he has to be behind the plot. Playing the role of the hijacker, Kyle demands that Carson stay on board, which he agrees, in order to cover his own exposure. As soon as the plane's door closes, Kyle knocks Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher, then handcuffs him to a rail, takes the detonator from his pocket and goes in search of Julia. Carson regains consciousness and takes a concealed gun from his leg and shoots the handcuffs. Kyle locks herself in the cockpit. She opens a hatch door to the upper level and throws out a binder to fool him into thinking she is escaping. Carson tries to head her off when he hears the thud, allowing Kyle to escape. Kyle encounters Carson's co-conspirator, flight attendant Stephanie, and knocks her down. Stephanie panics and flees.

Kyle, realizing the one place of the plane she didn't look (avionics) finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her the story. Apparently while Kyle slept, he and Stephanie picked up Julia and placed her in the food bin. Because they were in a row of the passenger section with not many people near them, no one saw them do it. Carson points his gun down where Julia lay before, but she isn't there. He turns around and sees Kyle carrying Julia and escaping through a small door with the detonator in her hand. Carson shoots at her as she closes the door, but she detonates the explosives, killing Carson. The compartment she and Julia hid in was non-combustible, which kept them safe.

Kyle, carrying Julia, exits via a cargo door. Everyone watches in shock and amazement as Kyle carries her daughter out onto the tarmac. In the passenger waiting section of the airport, Marcus apologizes to Kyle and leads her to a van which has come to take them the rest of their way. Julia wakes up and sleepily asks "Are we there yet?" The two get in the van and drive off.

Cast

Box office and reaction

Flightplan grossed $89,602,378 at the box office and over $223,000,000 worldwide. It also grossed $49,270,000 on DVD rentals. The movie was met with mixed reviews from critics. It has a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review Roger Ebert described the film as 'a frightening thriller with an airtight plot', but James Berardinelli saw it as plotwise 'going into a tailspin from which it never recovers.'

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, called for an official boycott of the film, which they say depicts flight attendants as rude, uncaring, indifferent, and even one as a "terrorist."[2]

Soundtrack

The score of the movie was released September 20, 2005, on Hollywood Records. The music was composed and conducted by James Horner and the disc contains 8 tracks.

Flightplan Soundtrack

Tracklist:

  1. "Leaving Berlin"
  2. "Missing Child"
  3. "The Search"
  4. "So Vulnerable"
  5. "Creating Panic"
  6. "Opening the Casket"
  7. "Carson's Plan"
  8. "Mother and Child"

Total Play Time: 50:36

Additional Information

  • The DVD release of this movie is one of the few protected with Sony DADC's new ARccOS copy protection.

References

  1. ^ http://flightplan.movies.go.com
  2. ^ Flight attendants hope to ground 'Flightplan' - More news and other features - MSNBC.com

External links


Preceded by
Just Like Heaven		 Box office number-one films of 2005 (USA)
September 25, 2005 – October 2, 2005		 Succeeded by
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit






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