FLIGHTPLAN

'''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. It features many plot similarities with the films ''Bunny Lake is Missing'' and Alfred Hitchcock's ''The Lady Vanishes''.

Contents

Taglines

Story

Cast

Controversy

Soundtrack

Trivia

Additional Information

References

External links

Taglines

★ ''If someone took everything you live for... How far would you go to get it back?''

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 six-year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston). After falling asleep and waking up about three hours into the flight, Kyle discovers her daughter is missing. She searches the plane for her daughter, but is then told that according to the passenger manifest her daughter never boarded the flight. None of her fellow passengers remember having seen her either.
A search of the plane fails to find Julia. The captain (Sean Bean) 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 is unhinged by her husband's recent death, and has imagined bringing her daughter aboard the aircraft. She has no boarding pass stub for her daughter, and, according to the gate at the Berlin airport, 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 Julia 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 Julia must be somewhere inside it. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, Carson (Peter Sarsgaard), the flight's air marshal, is ordered by the captain to guard her.
Kyle herself begins to doubt that she brought her daughter along after being told Julia had died together with her husband, but becomes confident she is not imagining things when she notices 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. Carson finds her and escorts her back to her seat.
At this point it is revealed that Carson and Stephanie (an on-board flight attendant), plus a coroner in Berlin, are the true villains. Carson has devised a complicated scheme to con the airline into transferring 50 million USD to a bank account, claiming that Kyle has revealed herself to him to be a hijacker and is threatening to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the un-x-rayed coffin unless her demands are met. In fact, the villains have previously killed Kyle's husband and have now abducted Julia to create this situation so they can frame Kyle as the hijacker and extortionist. After the plane lands they intend to obliterate Julia's body by detonating the explosives, now moved to the avionics section at the front of the plane beside the unconscious child, and leave Kyle dead on the plane with the detonator in her hand.
After making an emergency landing in Goose Bay, Labrador, the plane's passengers and crew evacuate, with the exception of Kyle, Carson, and Stephanie. However, by chance, Kyle is accidentally tipped off about what is happening and about Carson. Kyle manages to knock Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher and removes the bomb detonator from his pocket. As Carson lies injured on the floor, Kyle escapes to try once again to find Julia. Stephanie attempts to prevent Kyle from reaching Julia, but is knocked down by a single punch. Stephanie then panics and decides to abandon Carson and flees the plane.
Carson comes to himself and goes in search of Kyle, to ensure that she does not leave the plane with her daughter. He enters the avionics bay of the aircraft, but Kyle has found the unconscious Julia and moved her to a hiding place farther back in the airplane. As Carson is approaching the area where he left Julia, he exclaims that it had been easy to take her and bring her into the avionics bay via a service elevator without any of the passengers noticing. Carson arrives at the front of the plane and discovers Julia gone. He turns to resume his hunt, and Kyle detonates the explosives, killing Carson instantly and seriously damaging the front end of the plane.
Kyle, carrying Julia, manages to exit via 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 Kyle receives apologies from the captain. A white Dodge Grand Caravan arrives to pick up Kyle and Julia, and they drive off.

Cast

★ Jodie Foster: Kyle Pratt

★ Peter Sarsgaard: Gene Carson

★ Sean Bean: Captain Rich

★ Kate Beahan: Stephanie

★ Michael Irby: Obaid

★ Assaf Cohen: Ahmed

★ Erika Christensen: Fiona

★ Greta Scacchi: The Therapist

★ Shane Edelman: Mr. Loud

★ Mary Gallagher: Mrs. Loud

★ Haley Ramm: Brittany Loud

★ Forrest Landis: Rhett Loud

★ Jana Kolesarova: Claudia

★ Brent Sexton: Elias

★ Marlene Lawston: Julia

★ Judith Scott: Estella

★ Tonje Larsgard;Flight Attendant

Controversy

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, with 85,000 members, had called for an official boycott of the film, which they say depicts flight attendants as rude, uncaring, indifferent, and even one as a "terrorist." The boycott eventually failed.
As of February 10, 2006, the film had grossed over $200 million worldwide.

Soundtrack

The 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.

'Tracklist:'
# Leaving Berlin
# Missing Child
# The Search
# So Vulnerable
# Creating Panic
# Opening the Casket
# Carsons's Plan
# Mother and Child
Total play time 50:36 min.

Trivia

★ 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.

★ The airline featured in the film, Aalto Airlines, may be a reference to Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto, but also to the Latin root "altus," meaning "high."

★ Much of the film's plot is taken from Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film ''The Lady Vanishes'', even including the heart drawn in the fog on the window. 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, although the headcount counter Stephanie used in the beginning of the film are currently rarely in use on airplanes.

★ 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"), Greek ("Kalós Ílthate"), Irish Gaelic ("Fáilte"), Russian ("Dobro pozhalovat"), Tagalog ("Mabuhay"), Urdu ("Khush Amdeed"), Japanese ("Yokoso"), Spanish ("Bienvenidos"), English ("Welcome"), French ("Bienvenue"), Norwegian ("Velkommen"), Swedish ("Välkommen"), German ("Willkommen") and Dutch ("Welkom").

★ As in many US-made films, the jurisdiction of the FBI seems to have been expanded beyond the borders of the United States. FBI Agents are seen making enquiries and arrests in Canada when the plane lands there. Additionally, those agents cite the fact that ''our office in Berlin has detained the morgue director''. Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers, according to Canadian law, would have been the ones to detain suspects.^[3]

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. http://www.mojaveweblog.com/pages/2005/050606-1.html
3. Entry in Moviemistakes.com

External links

★ Official site

★ Film trailer at Apple.com

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