Flightplan - Without a trace
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Flightplan - Without a trace |
| Original title | Flight plan |
 | |
| Country of production | USA , Germany |
| original language | English , German |
| Publishing year | 2005 |
| length | 94 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 12 JMK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Schwentke |
| script |
Peter A. Dowling Billy Ray |
| production | Brian Grazer |
| music | James Horner |
| camera | Florian Ballhaus |
| cut | Thom Noble |
| occupation | |
| |
Flightplan - Without any trace is a thriller by the German director Robert Schwentke from 2005 . The screenplay was written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray and the film was produced by the film studios Touchstone Pictures and Imagine Entertainment . In Germany the film had around two million viewers.
action
After the accidental death of her husband, the engine engineer Kyle Pratt decides to leave Germany with her six-year-old daughter Julia and move back to the USA. Both are the first passengers to board the fictional E-474 passenger aircraft (based on the Airbus A380 / Boeing 747 ). After the start, Pratt falls asleep. When she wakes up again, her daughter has disappeared. Pratt questions the passengers and the flight attendants, but no one claims to have noticed the little girl. At Pratt's urging, the pilot instructs the flight attendants and Sky Marshal Gene Carson to search the plane for Julia.
After an unsuccessful search, the crew suspect that the girl was never on board. The passenger list is checked, and based on this, Julia's seat was allegedly not occupied. The mother urges them to search the hold ; however, the pilot does not allow this for safety reasons. The crew received the information by radio that Julia Pratt had died together with Kyle's husband - apparently the mother could not psychologically cope with the death of her daughter and suppressed it. When she is about to believe it herself, she sees the heart on the pane that Julia painted there before the start. Kyle Pratt realizes that their daughter is still alive and must be on the plane somewhere.
With the help of her technical knowledge, she triggers the fall of the oxygen masks in order to get to the cargo hold in the panic that triggers the passengers. In the confusion, she continues to look for Julia. However, she is tracked down and handcuffed by Carson while the captain prepares a stopover in Newfoundland . It turns out that the Sky Marshal and a flight attendant planned blackmail and stunned the child and hid it in the avionics room to end up with Pratt as a psychopathic perpetrator. Carson convinces the captain that Pratt himself planned to hijack an airplane. He arranged for a ransom of $ 50 million to be sent. Otherwise an explosive device located in the avionics room would be detonated.
Captain Rich speaks to Pratt about her alleged demands, which at that moment reveals the truth. The plane is evacuated; but Pratt can prevent the Sky Marshal from leaving the plane. After a short fight, she is able to overpower the Sky Marshal and the flight attendant and get the explosives trigger. Then she finds her unconscious daughter in the aircraft's avionics room. Pratt detonates the charge that kills the Sky Marshal, who previously admitted to murdering Pratt's husband. Together with her daughter she escapes from the burning plane and is received by the astonished captain, who then apologizes to her.
Emergence
The film was based on an idea by the scriptwriter Peter A. Dowling in 1999. After the attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 , the scriptwriter Billy Ray was brought in to the project. The script was revised and the idea of terrorists aboard the aircraft was discarded. The German Robert Schwentke, who trained at the American Film Institute and had caught the attention of producers with his thriller tattoo , was hired as director.
The shooting of Flightplan , whose plot is strongly reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's spy comedy A Lady Disappears , began on September 20, 2004. a. in Berlin , Los Angeles and at Leipzig / Halle Airport . Robert Schwentke selected 150 for the upper deck and 300 for the main deck from among the thousands of extras.
Setting up the sets was also a challenge for the film crew, as most of the action takes place on the plane. The fictional E-474 is the first double-decker aircraft built as a functional film set. The interior was 36 m long, the total length of the cabin was 75 m and was stabilized by a raised, almost 100 m long basic structure. The sets were designed for the shooting, including the cockpit. The special effects of the film included the airplane. It was realized exclusively through artificial CGI recordings. At the same time, a 1:10 scale model of the E-474 was manufactured, which could be lifted into the air on a frame by cranes in order to film it from different angles and to simulate take-offs or landings.
Flightplan started on September 23, 2005 in the USA, grossed US $ 24.6 million there on the opening weekend and was number one on the US box office for two weeks. In Germany, the film opened on October 20, 2005 and landed at the top of the box office for three weeks. The film grossed around 223 million US dollars worldwide.
In the USA, American flight attendant associations called for a boycott of Robert Schwentke's thriller, which does not throw a good light on the flight crew in commercial aircraft. Echoing the hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, to which there are several allusions in the film (date mention, Arab terrorist), said Tommie Hutto-Blake, President of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants: "If there were to be another September 11th, then it would be crucial for the flight crew to have the support of their passengers and not the mistrust that this film could generate."
Reviews
The film received largely mixed to negative reviews from reviewers. The Rotten Tomatoes website counted only 38% positive out of a total of 173 reviews and sums up the consensus of the critics as follows: "While the actors all perform well, the tension of the film falls flat as soon as the haunted plot begins."
The film received similar reviews for the most part in Germany:
“For a long time, this thriller is reasonably exciting, thanks to the captivating presence of Jodie Foster and the unleashed camera that Florian Ballhaus learned from his father Michael. The script, however, suggests loops and capers that no airplane of this size can handle. And the way in which the Arab 'suspects' are dealt with in the end is a case for the UN. "
“'Flightplan' [...] wants to be a suspense cinema and psychodrama at the same time. And in the end he has to struggle with the dilemma of so-called high-concept thrillers, the plot of which should fit on a matchbox. For a moment the overwhelming effect may reign, but questions of plausibility immediately arise. [...] Certainly, film history would be poor without the challenge of making the unbelievable believable; but the 'flight plan' premise weighs on the entire project. "
"Stylish, captivating, great cast - you couldn't ask for more from a thriller."
“At least in the USA, Robert Schwentke made a precision landing with 'Flight Plan'. More than 60 million viewers have already seen the thriller. The flick will only be a success in Germany if the viewers in the cinema switch off their minds. Because this completely over-constructed story is devoid of any logic - a crash landing. There are more holes in the story than there are air holes on a trans-Atlantic flight. The only ray of hope is the always fabulous Jodie Foster, who knows how to play her role convincingly and thoroughly moving. "
"The weak and implausible plot serves as a pretext for a virtuoso staged thriller in which the technology - of the airplane and the filmmaker - becomes independent as the sole purpose."
The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating "valuable".
Trivia
The name of the protagonist who develops aircraft engines is "Pratt" and is similar to the name of the US engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Flightplan - Without any trace . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2005 (PDF; test number: 5C 103 C).
- ↑ Age rating for Flightplan - Without any trace . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ Flightplan (2005) - Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 17, 2019 .
- ↑ Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved on August 27, 2013
- ↑ Berliner Morgenpost , October 20, 2005: Not without my daughter
- ^ Der Tagesspiegel , October 18, 2005: Free Fall
- ^ BZ , October 20, 2005: The crash landing
- ↑ Flightplan - Without any trace. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Flightplan - Without a trace on fbw-filmbassy.com
Web links
- Flightplan - Without any trace in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Flightplan - Without a trace at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Flightplan - Without a trace at Metacritic (English)
- Flightplan - Without any trace in the online film database
- Flightplan - Without any trace in the German synchronous file
- Review of Telepolis