Plot
A claustrophobic, Hitchcockian thriller. A bereaved woman and her daughter are flying home from Berlin to America. At 30,000 feet the child vanishes and nobody admits she was ever on that plane.
Release Year: 2005
Rating: 6.2/10 (62,755 voted)
Critic's Score: 53/100
Director:
Robert Schwentke
Stars: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean
Storyline The husband of aviation engineer Kyle Pratt has just died in Berlin. Now she is flying back to New York with his coffin and their six-year-old daughter Julia. Three hours into the flight Kyle awakens to find that Julia is gone! It's a big double-decker plane, so very concerned mother has a lot of territory to cover in order to find her daughter. But as Kyle fights to discern the truth, she takes matters into her own hands.
Writers: Peter A. Dowling, Billy Ray
Cast: Jodie Foster
-
Kyle Pratt
Peter Sarsgaard
-
Carson
Sean Bean
-
Captain Rich
Kate Beahan
-
Stephanie
Michael Irby
-
Obaid
Assaf Cohen
-
Ahmed
Erika Christensen
-
Fiona
Shane Edelman
-
Mr. Loud
Mary Gallagher
-
Mrs. Loud
Haley Ramm
-
Brittany Loud
Forrest Landis
-
Rhett Loud
Jana Kolesárová
-
Claudia
Brent Sexton
-
Elias
Marlene Lawston
-
Julia
Judith Scott
-
Estella
Taglines:
If Someone Took Everything You Live For... How Far Would You Go To Get It Back?
Opening Weekend: $24,629,938
(USA)
(25 September 2005)
(3424 Screens)
Gross: $223,387,299
(Worldwide)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The Berlin airport scenes were actually shot in Leipzig, Germany.
Goofs:
Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers):
Throughout the film, the characters refer to the passengers leaving the plane as "deboarding". In the airline industry, this is called "deplaning." Boarding a plane is called "enplaning."
Quotes:
[first lines]
Mortuary Director:
[in German, subtitled]
Would you like a moment of privacy before the casket is sealed? Kyle:
[hesitantly]
Okay.
User Review
I have a cunning plan…
Rating: 1/10
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
This must be close to the plot synopsis:
Man: "You know we're always saying we could use 50 million dollars?
Woman: "Yes"
Man: "Well I have a cunning plan."
Woman: "What's that then?"
Man: "First of all we need to find an aeronautics engineer working in a
foreign country, with a child, and an encyclopedic knowledge of the
layout of a particular long-haul plane."
Woman: "Why's that?"
Man: "Well then, you see, we murder her spouse, in such a way as it
looks like an accident."
Woman: "What for?"
Man (exasperated): "Well then of course, we bribe the mortuary
assistant at the hospital into letting us place explosives inside the
casket."
Woman: "But why?"
Man: "I'm coming to that. Then we wait until the woman decides to
return the the U.S."
Woman: "But what if she doesn't?"
Man: "She just will, okay? So anyway, when she decides to return home
we find out what flight she's on. Hopefully she is not only placed on
the type of plane of which she has encyclopedic knowledge, and flying
with the airline of which you're a flight attendant, but also on the
same flight as her dead husband's casket. Are you following?"
Woman: "I think so."
Man:"Good, we're nearly there. Then all we need to do is falsify the
checking-in information to remove all record of her daughter, make sure
she gets on the plane half an hour before everybody else, ensure there
is a row of empty seats behind her and get me on the flight, sitting
nearby."
Woman: "And then?"
Man (laughing): "Now this the cunning part. She takes the empty seats,
allowing her daughter to sit in the aisle seat, then when she goes to
sleep, all I have to do is steal a food trolley, stuff the daughter
into it and hide her in the hold. Oh, and did I mention that we must
ensure that nobody on the entire plane sees the daughter?"
Woman: "Isn't this getting a little far fetched?"
Man (angry): "What do'you mean? It's a great plan? All I have to do
then is remove the child's boarding pass from wherever the mother is
keeping it without waking her, assist her search for the missing child
in the guise of an Air Marshal, convince the captain that the woman is
mad and that the child died with her father (through a forged note from
the mortician), and wait for the mother to escape from my custody.
Woman:"Escape, why?"
Man: "Because the casket can only be unlocked by her, so once she's
unlocked it I can set the timer on the explosives. From there we're
home and dry. I merely have to recapture her, convince the captain that
she's actually not mad but a hijacker who wants 50 million dollars and
give the Captain our account number, asking him to ensure the money is
paid straight in. Oh, Then we land, everybody gets off the plane, I
shoot the mother and blow up the daughter and nobody is any the wiser.
We walk away with a cool 50 million. Simple eh?"
Never before have I wasted two hours of my life on quite such egregious
nonsense.
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