Flightplan
Encyclopedia
Flightplan is a 2005 thriller film directed by Robert Schwentke
Robert Schwentke
Robert Schwentke is a German film director best known for the films Tattoo and Flightplan.He was a graduate of Columbia College Hollywood in 1992....

 and starring Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

, Peter Sarsgaard
Peter Sarsgaard
John Peter Sarsgaard is an American film and stage actor. He landed his first feature role in the movie Dead Man Walking in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films Another Day in Paradise and Desert Blue. That same year, Sarsgaard received a substantial role in The Man in the Iron...

, Erika Christensen
Erika Christensen
Erika Jane Christensen is an American actress whose film appearances include Traffic , Swimfan , How to Rob a Bank , and The Perfect Score , among others. She also co-starred in the short-lived drama Six Degrees on ABC...

, Kate Beahan
Kate Beahan
Kate Beahan is an Australian film actress.Beahan was born in Perth. she appeared mostly in movies and TV series in Australia ....

, Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

, and Sean Bean
Sean Bean
Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe...

. It was released in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 on September 23, 2005. Flightplan has several similarities to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White...

.

Plot

Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

) is a propulsion engineer based in Berlin, Germany. Her husband David (John Benjamin Hickey
John Benjamin Hickey
John Benjamin Hickey is an American actor with a career in stage, film and television. He won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Felix Turner in The Normal Heart....

) died from falling off the roof of their apartment building, and now Kyle and her six year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston
Marlene Lawston
Marlene Lawston is an American child actress.-Career:Lawston's acting debut was in the 2005 movie Flightplan, where she played Julia, the six-year-old daughter of Kyle Pratt who was kidnapped onboard a plane. In 2006 she played Julie Grant in the Law & Order episode "Thinking Makes It So"...

) are flying home to Long Island to bury him and stay with Kyle's parents. They fly aboard a passenger aircraft, an Elgin 474, 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
Sean Bean
Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe...

) is forced to conduct a search. Kyle walks the aisles, questioning people, but none of her fellow passengers remember having seen her daughter. 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 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. One flight attendant Stephanie (Kate Beahan
Kate Beahan
Kate Beahan is an Australian film actress.Beahan was born in Perth. she appeared mostly in movies and TV series in Australia ....

) is exceptionally unsympathetic. 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
Peter Sarsgaard
John Peter Sarsgaard is an American film and stage actor. He landed his first feature role in the movie Dead Man Walking in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films Another Day in Paradise and Desert Blue. That same year, Sarsgaard received a substantial role in The Man in the Iron...

) is ordered by Marcus to guard and handcuff her.

Later on, Marcus receives a wire from the hospital in Berlin. It says that Julia was with her father when he fell off the roof, and she also died of internal injuries. Kyle furiously denies that, consistently claiming that she brought Julia aboard. The crew now believes she is delusional and she is brought back to her seat by Air Marshal Carson. A therapist (Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi
Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

) on board tries to console her, causing Kyle for a moment to doubt her own sanity until she notices that a heart Julia had drawn earlier on the window next to her seat is real. Kyle is emboldened and convinces the therapist to let her use the bathroom. Instead of doing so, she climbs into the upper compartment and sabotages the aircraft's electronics, deploying the oxygen masks and interrupting lighting. Some passengers brawl with the Arab passengers, presuming them to be terrorists. She uses the chaos to take an elevator to the lower freight deck. She desperately searches for Julia and finally opens her husband's casket to which she emotionally breaks down. Carson finds her, puts her in handcuffs and escorts her back.

Kyle makes a final plea to Carson that she needs to search the plane upon landing. Carson considers for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain", against flight attendant Stephanie's command (they are landing), leaving the audience to momentarily believe he is sympathetic. Instead, he sneaks back into the freight deck to remove two small explosives and a detonator concealed in David's casket. He then climbs down to a part of the avionics section, revealing Julia is sleeping (presumably drugged) with her coat and backpack that no one could find. He attaches the explosives to the side of the platform and arms them. At this point, it is revealed that Carson, Stephanie, and the coroner in Berlin (Christian Berkel
Christian Berkel
Christian Berkel is a German actor.Berkel was born in Berlin, Germany. His father was a military doctor.From the age of 14 he lived in Paris where he took drama lessons with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Berlin...

) are the antagonists and part of a conspiracy. Carson tells the captain that Kyle 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. It is revealed that the conspirators killed Kyle's husband and abducted Julia in order to frame Kyle. Carson tells an unnerved Stephanie that he intends to blow up the aircraft's avionics section, killing the unconscious Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator in her hand.

After making an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport
CFB Goose Bay
Canadian Forces Base Goose Bay , is a Canadian Forces Base located in the town of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador....

 in Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada
Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador
Happy Valley – Goose Bay is a Canadian town in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.Located in the central part of Labrador, the town is the largest population centre in that region. Incorporated in 1973, the town composes the former town of Happy Valley and the Local Improvement District of...

, the passengers exit the aircraft as the tarmac is surrounded by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. As the captain is leaving, Kyle runs to speak to him with Carson in tow. The captain demands she give up her charade, revealing Carson's deception. Quickly playing the role of hijacker, Kyle demands that Carson stay on board and the crew disembark.

As soon as the plane's door closes, Kyle knocks Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher, handcuffs him to a rail, and takes the detonator from his pocket. Stephanie comes out of hiding and Kyle screams "she's in avionics isn't she?" Carson quickly regains consciousness and fires at Kyle with a concealed gun, sending her running. He chases after Kyle shooting, until she locks herself in the cockpit. He reveals his conspiracy to talk her out. She opens a hatch door to the upper level and throws out a binder to fool him. Carson hears the upstairs thud and leaves. Kyle exits and encounters a guilt-ridden Stephanie. Kyle talks her down and punches her out. Stephanie panics and flees the plane, abandoning Carson who looks on.

Kyle during this time searches avionics and finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her how he gagged and dumped her daughter into the food bin. He disparages the people aboard who would never care enough to notice. Carson points his gun to where Julia lay before, but they're not there. He turns around and sees Kyle carrying Julia, escaping through a small door with the detonator in hand. Carson shoots at her as she closes the door. She detonates the explosives, killing Carson. The compartment she and Julia hid in was non-combustible, which keeps 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.

Later in the passenger waiting section of the airport, Marcus apologizes to a seated Kyle holding Julia in her arms. Stephanie is led away by FBI agents and more agents approach Kyle, asking her to identify the morgue director in Berlin who has been detained. She carries Julia still unconscious through the crowd of passengers, silently redeeming herself. One of the Arab passengers named Obaid (Michael Irby
Michael Irby
Michael Clinton Irby is an American film and television actor. He is known for portraying Sergeant First Class Charles Grey in The Unit.-Personal life:...

) helps pick up her bag, a symbolic act of respect and forgiveness. Before loading her daughter into a van to take them away, Julia wakes up and sleepily asks "Are we there yet?" as they drive away.

Cast

  • Jodie Foster
    Jodie Foster
    Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

     as Kyle Pratt
  • Peter Sarsgaard
    Peter Sarsgaard
    John Peter Sarsgaard is an American film and stage actor. He landed his first feature role in the movie Dead Man Walking in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films Another Day in Paradise and Desert Blue. That same year, Sarsgaard received a substantial role in The Man in the Iron...

     as Gene Carson
  • Erika Christensen
    Erika Christensen
    Erika Jane Christensen is an American actress whose film appearances include Traffic , Swimfan , How to Rob a Bank , and The Perfect Score , among others. She also co-starred in the short-lived drama Six Degrees on ABC...

     as Fiona
  • Kate Beahan
    Kate Beahan
    Kate Beahan is an Australian film actress.Beahan was born in Perth. she appeared mostly in movies and TV series in Australia ....

     as Stephanie
  • Greta Scacchi
    Greta Scacchi
    Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

     as Lisa
  • Sean Bean
    Sean Bean
    Shaun Mark "Sean" Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and, previously, British Colonel Richard Sharpe in the ITV television series Sharpe...

     as Captain Marcus Rich
  • Michael Irby
    Michael Irby
    Michael Clinton Irby is an American film and television actor. He is known for portraying Sergeant First Class Charles Grey in The Unit.-Personal life:...

     as Obaid
  • Assaf Cohen as Ahmed
  • Shane Edelman as Mr. Loud
  • Mary Gallagher as Mrs. Loud
  • Haley Ramm
    Haley Ramm
    Haley Michelle Ramm is an American actress. She played a young Jean Grey in X-Men: The Last Stand and appeared in multiple episodes of the CBS drama Without a Trace throughout 2007 and 2008.-Early life:...

     as Brittany Loud
  • Forrest Landis
    Forrest Landis
    Forrest Landis is an American child actor. He is perhaps best known for his roles of Mark Baker in Cheaper by the Dozen and Rhett Loud in Flightplan...

     as Rhett Loud
  • Fred Tungulsten as Jordan
  • Jana Kolesarova as Claudia
  • Brent Sexton as Elias
  • Marlene Lawston
    Marlene Lawston
    Marlene Lawston is an American child actress.-Career:Lawston's acting debut was in the 2005 movie Flightplan, where she played Julia, the six-year-old daughter of Kyle Pratt who was kidnapped onboard a plane. In 2006 she played Julie Grant in the Law & Order episode "Thinking Makes It So"...

     as Julia Pratt
  • Judith Scott
    Judith Scott (actress)
    Judith Scott is an American actress who has been filmed since 1987 mainly in TV series. She was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.She portrayed Dr. Rose Kent on Season 1 of 24. She played a recurring role as Dr. Jenna Williams on the series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She portrayed Esmee...

     as Estella
  • Tonje Larsgard as Flight Attendant
  • Amanda Brooks
    Amanda Brooks
    Amanda Brooks is an actress who starred in the 2007 film D-War and in the 2006 film Cut Off. She also had leading roles in the 2005 films Flightplan and River's End. She is the daughter of film composer Joe Brooks....

     as Irene
  • Christian Berkel
    Christian Berkel
    Christian Berkel is a German actor.Berkel was born in Berlin, Germany. His father was a military doctor.From the age of 14 he lived in Paris where he took drama lessons with Jean-Louis Barrault and Pierre Berlin...

     as Mortuary Director
  • John Benjamin Hickey
    John Benjamin Hickey
    John Benjamin Hickey is an American actor with a career in stage, film and television. He won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Felix Turner in The Normal Heart....

     as David
  • Matt Bomer as Eric
  • Gavin Grazer
    Gavin Grazer
    Gavin Grazer is an American film actor and director. Grazer is the brother of Academy Award-winning film producer Brian Grazer...

     as FBI Agent
  • Christopher Gartin
    Christopher Gartin
    Christopher Russell Gartin is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his role in the 1996 film Tremors 2: Aftershocks as cab driver Grady Hoover. He also had roles in the films As Virgins Fall, Johns and the comedy Friends & Family...

     as Mike
  • Bess Wohl as Katerina
  • Kirk B.R. Woller as Grunick
  • Stephanie Faracy
    Stephanie Faracy
    Stephanie Faracy is an American film and television actress.Faracy was born in Brooklyn, New York. One of her earliest notable roles was as Mary Carson's servant "Judy", in the 1983 television mini-series The Thorn Birds.Faracy also appeared with Frankie Faison and Nancy Walker in True Colors , a...

     as Anna
  • Cooper Thornton as West
  • Jesse Burch
    Jesse burch
    Jesse Burch is an actor, born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, USA. He is a supporter of English football team Sunderland AFC.-External links:*...

     as Row 19 Male Passenger
  • Drake Johnston as Main Deck Kid
  • Lois Hall
    Lois Hall
    -Biography:Hall was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, the daughter of Lois Grace , a teacher, and Ralph Stewart Hall, a businessman and inventor...

     as Main Deck Grandma
  • Dirk Vahle as Helicopter Pilot
  • David Farkas as Steward

Aircraft used

The aircraft used in this film was a fictional E-474. The interior design and layout is similar to an actual airplane, the Airbus A380
Airbus A380
The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. It is the largest passenger airliner in the world. Due to its size, many airports had to modify and improve facilities to accommodate it...

. In the DVD release, however, it is noted that the amount of dead space within the cabin, cargo and avionic
Avionics
Avionics are electronic systems used on aircraft, artificial satellites and spacecraft.Avionic systems include communications, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems and the hundreds of systems that are fitted to aircraft to meet individual roles...

 areas do not reflect the actual amount of dead space within any aircraft. Of special note in the movie is the avionics computer seen below the cockpit and the clean space between the upper deck passenger areas and the fuselage
Fuselage
The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...

.

Box office and reaction

Flightplan grossed $89,602,378 at the box office and over $223,000,000 worldwide. It also grossed $79,270,000 on DVD rentals. The movie was met with mixed reviews from critics. It has a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

. In his review Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 described the film as 'a frightening thriller with an airtight plot', but James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Personal life:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey...

 saw it as plotwise 'going into a tailspin from which it never recovers.'

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants
Association of Professional Flight Attendants
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants represents the 19,900 US-based flight attendants of American Airlines. APFA union headquarters is located in Euless, Texas....

 called for an official boycott of the film, which they say depicts flight attendant
Flight attendant
Flight attendants or cabin crew are members of an aircrew employed by airlines primarily to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers aboard commercial flights, on select business jet aircraft, and on some military aircraft.-History:The role of a flight attendant derives from that of similar...

s as rude, uncaring, indifferent, and even one as a "terrorist."

Soundtrack

The score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...

 of the movie was released September 20, 2005, on Hollywood Records
Hollywood Records
Hollywood Records is an American record label owned by Disney Music Group, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.-History:Hollywood Records was founded in 1989 by then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner with the idea of expanding the music operations of the company and to develop and promote...

. The music was composed and conducted by James Horner
James Horner
James Roy Horner is an American composer, orchestrator and conductor of orchestral and film music. He is noted for the integration of choral and electronic elements in many of his film scores, and for frequent use of Celtic musical elements...

 and the disc contains 8 tracks.

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 ARccOS
    ARccOS Protection
    ARccOS is a copy-protection system made by Sony that is used on some DVDs. Designed as an additional layer to be used in conjunction with Content Scramble System , the system deliberately creates corrupted sectors on the DVD, which cause copying software to produce errors .Despite being promoted...

    copy protection.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK