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
Distributed by Buena Vista International
Release date(s) September 23, 2005
DVD: January 24, 2006
Running time 98 min.
Language English
Budget $ 55,000,000
IMDb profile

Flightplan is a 2005 American film directed by Robert Schwentke and starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen and Sean Bean. Its North American release was in 23 September 2005.

Contents

[edit] Story

A variation on the locked room mystery, the movie depicts what happens after Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) boards a fictional Aalto Airlines flight from Berlin to New York with her daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston). After falling asleep and waking up about three hours into the flight, Kyle learns that her daughter is missing. She searches the plane for her daughter, but according to the passenger manifest her daughter never boarded the flight. Also, no one remembers having seen her.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A search of the plane fails to find Julia. The captain refuses to allow the cargo hold to be searched because he is afraid that the searchers could be hurt if the freight shifts because of turbulence. Both the captain and the other crew members suspect that Kyle, unhinged by her husband's recent death, has imagined bringing her daughter aboard the aircraft. She has no boarding pass stub for her daughter, and, according to the airport at which she boarded the aircraft, no one by her daughter's name was on the manifest. In addition, the flight attendant who took the passenger headcount never saw anyone in the seat that Kyle's daughter was supposed to have occupied. Faced with the crew's increasing skepticism regarding her daughter's existence, Kyle becomes more and more desperate, frantic, and erratic in her behavior, continuing to insist that she brought her daughter on board the aircraft with her and that she is somewhere aboard the craft. Kyle herself has second thoughts about having brought her daughter along, but becomes confident she is not imagining things after noticing the heart Julia had earlier fingered on the window by her seat.

Because Kyle is an aeronautical engineer and had helped to design the engines used on the aircraft, a fictional Elgin E-474[1] commercial aircraft, she is able to make use of her knowledge of the aircraft's layout and escapes to hunt for her daughter. She even opens her late husband's coffin, which she is transporting back to the United States. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, Carson, the aircraft's air marshal, guards her. However, it turns out that Carson, an on-board flight attendant, and a coroner in Berlin are the true villains. It is implied that they have abducted Julia for the same reason that they killed Kyle's husband. They plan to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the non-x-rayed coffin, after they receive word that the airline has deposited $50 million in a bank account, supposedly according to Kyle's instructions. These actions are meant to implicate Kyle in their crime, and the marshal assumes the role of negotiating her demands.

After making an emergency landing in Goose Bay, Newfoundland, the plane's passengers and crew evacuate, with the exception of Kyle, Carson, and Stephanie, the flight attendant. However, by chance, Kyle is accidentally tipped off about what is happening and about Carson. Kyle manages to hit Carson with a fire extinguisher and remove the bomb detonator from his pocket. As he lies injured on the ground, Kyle escapes to go and retrieve Julia, who has been resting unconsciously in the front of the avionics section at the bottom of the plane. Stephanie frantically leaves the plane, leaving Carson behind as he wakes up to go and find Kyle, making sure she does not leave the plane with her daughter. Carson enters the avionics bay of the aircraft with Kyle and Julia hiding underneath. As he is searching the area where he left Julia, he exclaims that he managed to kidnap her and bring her into the avionics via a food elevator without any other passengers noticing. Carson walks in the front of the plane where he initially left Julia and installed the explosives, and Kyle, with both Julia and the detonator in her hand, blows up the front of the aircraft, thus killing Carson. Kyle and Julia manage to escape safely through a cargo door, and the FBI, flight passengers, and crew members all look at Kyle in amazement as she carries her daughter out onto the tarmac.

The next morning, the crew and passengers rest at the airport, while Kyle receives apologies from the captain. A minivan arrives to pick up Kyle and Julia, as they drive off to continue their journey home to New York. (Sure, they drove down from Goose Bay, Newfoundland to New York... a 2000 miles ride... Sure)

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Taglines

  • If someone took everything you live for... How far would you go to get it back?
  • She designed the plane from top to bottom. Now she'll have to tear it apart.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Controversy

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants has called for an official boycott of the film, which they say depicts flight attendants as rude, uncaring, indifferent, and even one as a "terrorist." About 85,000 flight attendants are members of this association, but their boycott had a minimal impact, since the movie, as of February 10, 2006, has grossed over $200 million worldwide.

[edit] Soundtrack

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

Flightplan Soundtrack
Enlarge
Flightplan Soundtrack

Tracklist:

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

Total playing time 50:36 min.

[edit] Trivia

In order to meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article's trivia section requires cleanup.
Content in the trivia section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article.
  • The fictionally designated E-474 aircraft aboard which the story is set, clearly resembles the Airbus A380 as far as its general arrangement of full length upper and lower passenger decks and four turbofan engines. The number is obviously derived from the Boeing 747. Additionally, the front portion of the aircraft most closely resembles the McDonnell Douglas MD-12. However, there are differences that become apparent such as the way the aircraft overhead bins are opened, the excessive use of the Aalto logo and the extremely large spaces within mechanical areas.
  • Every character referring to the Kaiser Wilhelm Hospital, where Kyle's husband was treated and pronounced dead, immediately adds "on Hochstraße" (in Berlin). There is no Kaiser Wilhelm Hospital on that street and city (but many others throughout Germany) so these words were possibly added to avoid any damage to the reputation of a real-life hospital.
  • In real life, Sean Bean, who plays Captain Rich, and Peter Sarsgaard, who plays air marshal Gene Carson both experience a fear of flying.
  • The airline featured in the film, Aalto Airlines, may be a reference to Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto.
  • The casting of Sean Bean serves as a red herring in the movie's plot, utilizing audience's familiarity of Bean playing the role of movie villain. Previews and TV-ads for Flightplan especially played on that expectation.
  • Jodie Foster's role was originally written for Sean Penn. The original character's name of "Kyle" was even kept.
  • The 35mm prints of this film come from a digital intermediate that has been digitally grain reduced. As a result there are digital grain reduction artifacts visible on all prints.
  • The film's premise is similar to Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film The Lady Vanishes. Parts of the plot are also similar to that of Bunny Lake is Missing, in that a mother has to convince the authorities that her child is not a figment of her imagination.
  • Boeing Aircraft engineers were brought in as technical consultants to the film and actress/producer Jodie Foster to verify the technical accuracy of the fictional aircraft, and the use of authentic terminology and jargon of aircraft design and operation.
  • The Goose Bay scenes were filmed far from snow, at the Mojave Spaceport in the Mojave Desert. One of the main taxiways was closed for the building of the set.[2]
  • There is an easter egg on the DVD that contains stock footage from the seatback displays during the movie, and another that shows the challenges of filming post-9-11.
  • A "Welcome aboard" video is shown during the passenger boarding scenes, with morphing effects between airline employees speaking different languages. It features greetings in (more or less in order): Mandarin ("Huan Ying"), Italian ("Benvenuti"), Akan ("Awkaaba"), Belarusian ("Zaprashajem"), Irish Gaelic ("Fáilte"), Russian ("Dobro pozhalovat"), Tagalog ("Mabuhay"), Urdu ("Khush Amdeed"), Japanese ("Yokoso"), Spanish ("Bienvenidos"), English ("Welcome" - twice), French ("Bienvenue"), Norwegian ("Velkommen"), Swedish ("Välkommen"), German ("Willkommen") and Dutch ("Welkom").
  • The cartoon that is played on the monitor when Kyle wakes up is Kenny The Shark.

[edit] External links

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