This article is about the 2005 film. For the aeronautical term, see
Flight plan.
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.
Plot
Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a propulsion engineer based in Berlin, Germany. Her husband David 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 passenger aircraft Elgin 474,(E474)[1] which Kyle helped design. After falling asleep for a few hours, Kyle wakes to find that Julia 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 daughter either. One of the flight attendants calls in to the airport they just departed from and, shockingly, 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 plane 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 Marcus 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. The pilot thought she had gone crazy. Kyle herself begins to doubt her own sanity, but then she notices the heart Julia had earlier drawn with her finger on the window by her seat. 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 after telling her she will be arrested for sabotage and presumably institutionalized.
Kyle makes one more desperate attempt to convince Carson that Julia is indeed on board the plane and that she needs to search it upon landing. Carson thinks for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain." Instead, he sneaks back into the cargo hold to remove some small explosives and a detonator which were concealed in David's casket. He then climbs down to a part of the avionics section where Julia is sleeping with her coat and backpack 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 (who had faked Julia's death) 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 aircraft's 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 and Labrador, the passengers are evacuated as the plane is surrounded by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents (though the airport is properly Royal Canadian Mounted Police jurisdiction). As the captain starts to debark, Kyle talks to him and realizes Carson 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. Carson has had enough of this and tells Kyle to open the door. 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 (Kate Beahan), and knocks her down. Stephanie panics and flees to turn herself in to the FBI.
Kyle, realizing the avionics section is the one part of the plane she hasn't searched yet, finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her the story. Apparently while Kyle slept, he and Stephanie approached Julia, Carson grabbed Julia before she could do anything, bound and gagged her 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 to 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 away while Kyle is seen as a hero in front of the public.
Cast
Box office and reaction
Flightplan grossed $89,602,378 at the box office and over $223,000,000 worldwide[2]. 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."[3]
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.
Tracklist:
- "Leaving Berlin"
- "Missing Child"
- "The Search"
- "So Vulnerable"
- "Creating Panic"
- "Opening the Casket"
- "Carson's Plan"
- "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
External links
