Genre: Thriller/Drama
Director: David Fincher
Writer: D.R. Cobb
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Mary Steenburgen, Adam Scott
Plot: Tender Branson (Ryan Gosling) sits in the cockpit of a Boeing 747, telling his life story to the black box. He is alone in the plane, having hijacked it and released the passengers and crew. He begins explaining the events leading up to the hijacking...
Tender is a member of the Creedish cult, which committed mass suicide ten years earlier. He is one of the Creedish members who was sent out into the world to work as a servant, and send his earnings back home. Survivors have been killing themselves ever since the mass suicide. Tender works as the housekeeper for a rich couple he never sees in Portland, OR. They issue him his directions each day through a speaker phone. At his bare bones apartment, Tender gets calls from people who want to kill themselves as the result of a newspaper typo which printed his phone number as the number for a suicide prevention hotline. Tender tells these people to kill themselves. The newspaper prints a retraction and the calls begin to dwindle, so Tender prints up fliers for a fake hotline with number on them.
One day a call comes from Trevor Hollis, a man who wants to kill himself because of nightmares he has about disasters. Tender tells Trevor to kill himself, and a few days later, reads his obituary in the paper. Tender goes to the cemetery to steal fake flowers for his employer's garden, and decides to visit Trevor's tomb while he is there. At the tomb, he meets Trevor's sister, Fertility (Rooney Mara), and they talk. Later that night, Tender has his weekly meeting with his caseworker from the Federal Survivor Retention Program, an agency that keeps tabs on the survivors of suicide cults. He asks her how many survivors there are remaining, and she informs him that there are only 100 survivors nationwide.
Tender explains into the black box how the Creedish Church works. Only the firstborn sons and their wives get to stay and reside in the community. The rest are sent out to cities throughout the country to work as servants. They are trained in etiquette, housecleaning, and other menial labor, after which they are sent out. Every month, they are expected to send back money and a letter of confession. All the Creedish wear highly recognizable clothing, both inside the community and out. Making it easy to spot another member of the Church in the outside world. Tender describes how, ten years previously, someone leaked the Church's doings to the police and the FBI were put on the case. The FBI move in to arrest the cult leaders only to find the entire community dead in an act of mass suicide upon hearing the news. The remaining survivors are expected to be prepared for such an event, and are expected to kill themselves as soon as they hear the news.
After their meeting, Fertility calls Tender thinking she has called a crisis hotline. Tender realizes it's Fertility, and begins speaking to her in a fake voice. But Fertility is psychic and knows that she is speaking to Tender. She talks about her brother's suicide and how she met a weird man at the cemetery, mentioning how he reminded her of a Creedish cult member, adding that he was unattractive and she believed him to be Trevor's homosexual lover. Eventually, she asks him to have phone sex with her, but he turns her down and hangs up on her. He stops answering his phone in fear that Fertility will be on the other line, wanting to have phone sex or growing more attracted to him as a mysterious voice than as a person.
During another meeting with his caseworker (Mary Steenburgen) at his employers' house, Tender gets frustrated with all of her questions and tells her that if she really wants to help him, she can start by scrubbing the shower tiles. Burnt out over a decade of lost suicide cases, the caseworker quickly grows obsessed with cleaning and soon takes over Tender's job. While cleaning, she reveals that many of the Creedish suicides were really murders masked to look like suicides to encourage more survivors to kill themselves.
A week from their last meeting, Tender and Fertility meet again at Trevor's tomb in the mausoleum. Fertility teaches him to dance, while revealing that Trevor had been psychic, and all the things he had dreams about had really happened. Tender receives a call from a man he recognizes as a member of the Creedish Church, and he soon realizes that the murderer of Creedish survivors is actually Creedish himself. The call scares him, and he fears that he will be the next victim. Immediately after the call, Fertility also calls Tender, again trying to reach the crisis hotline, and she tells him about dancing with the man at the mausoleum and asks him to get together with her. Tender, as the man at the crisis hotline, agrees on the condition that she agrees to take the man from the mausoleum (him) out on a date as well. She agrees.
On their date, Tender and Fertility ride the bus downtown, where a stranger rudely begins telling them tasteless jokes pointed at the Creedish mass suicide. Tender laughs at all the jokes, but Fertility snaps at the joker for making fun of suicide. When the joker rises to exit the bus, Tender recognizes the man's pants as Creedish dress, and recognizes the man as Adam, his twin brother (Ryan Gosling). Tender speaks Adam's name aloud, but when Adam asks if they are brothers, he desperately denies it. After getting off the bus, Fertility takes Tender to a department store that she knows will catch on fire, but that she knows will not harm them. Fertility explains that she has the same talent as her brother for dreaming the future.
Tender learns that he has become one of the last two survivors of the Creedish Church. The caseworker has him go over photos of dead Creedish to see if he can identify the other survivor, but he already knows that it is his brother Adam. He begins receiving phone calls from journalists and agents wanting his story. The caseworker suffocates on a chemical solution of ammonia and chlorine that she was using to clean the fireplace. Adam steals the caseworker's files on the Creedish suicides immediately after the murder. The police suspect Tender, but he claims innocence and slips away. Tender calls an agent and gets on a plane to New York.
The agent (Adam Scott) reveals that his agency has been planning for years to turn the last survivor of the Creedish cult into a religious celebrity. They create a fake history for Tender and completely overhaul his appearance. He is given steroid injections, health food, teeth caps, and is made to exercise and diet incessantly until he is the model of physical attractiveness. It is made clear by the agent that no one will worship an ugly religious leader.
As his agent's plans are realized, Tender's fame grows. These plans include the publication of Tender's "autobiography" and the "Book of Very Common Prayer", as well as the conversion of the former Creedish land into the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill (a 20,000-acre repository for America's outdated porn). Tender is waiting for the perfect moment to kill himself, but continually puts it off as circumstances fail to meet his criteria. Then, as his popularity starts to wane, the agent tells him that he needs to perform a miracle in order to stay famous. Fertility finds Tender and gives him a prediction to make on TV (that a hurricane will hit Miami). When the hurricane hits, Tender's fame swells to even greater proportions.
Tender and Fertility continue the ruse for some time, until the Super Bowl comes up and Tender's agent plans him an elaborate wedding to take place at half-time, after which Tender will issue another prediction. Tender goes wandering around, trying to meet up with Fertility, which he finally does in a bathroom where they've taken adjacent stalls. Adam appears then with a gun, and reveals that he's already laid a trap to kill Tender's agent the same way he killed the caseworker, so that Tender would be suspect for both murders. Fertility confirms that the agent will die the next day at the Super Bowl, and comes up with a plan for Tender to make a prediction big enough to distract the police just long enough for him to escape. Adam, Tender, and Fertility agree to escape together.
The day of the Super Bowl, Adam murders the agent, Tender is married, and as the police come to arrest him for the agent‘s murder, Tender predicts that the Colts will beat the Cardinals 28-24. The stadium erupts in chaos as angry football fans pour out of their seats to chase Tender and it is all the police can do to stop the crowd from mobbing him to death. Tender escapes with Adam and Fertility and the three then begin a journey across the country by hitching rides on semi-trucks transporting incomplete sections of houses from one location to another. Fertility intentionally gets separated from the brothers.
Adam and Tender steal a car that Fertility told them would be unlocked in a particular parking lot. Attached to the dashboard is a little figurine of Tender. The brothers, heading north to Canada, come to the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill on the way. As they drive through it, Tender spaces out and crashes the car into a giant concrete pylon in the middle of the landfill. The passenger side airbag sends the Tender figurine flying into Adam's left eye. Adam pulls out the figurine and asks Tender to find a rock and hit him with it. Tender refuses, but Adam asks him to find any rock that he can just to disfigure him with, pleading that if he goes to jail for his murders, he doesn't want the other inmates to even think about raping him. Tender reluctantly agrees, as long as Adam will tell him when to stop, but Adam keeps telling him to swing again until he dies.
Immediately afterwards, Fertility shows up in a taxicab and takes Tender away from the landfill. They go back to Portland, and Fertility plans to go on as a surrogate mother for couples who can't conceive to make some money. Fertility is told by a doctor that she is barren. In the middle of the night, Tender sneaks into Fertility‘s apartment, and she has sex with him. The next morning, Tender wakes up and Fertility tells him that she's pregnant. She then leaves for the airport to board a plane to Australia, leaving her planner behind. In it Tender reads that someone is going to hijack the plane and crash it into the Australian outback.
Tender follows Fertility to the airport and uses Adam’s gun to board the plane. He searches for the hijacker until he realizes that he is the hijacker.
Speaking to the black box, Tender mentions that Fertility told him there was a way for him to escape the plane before it crashes. Tender parachutes out of the plane mere moments before it hits the ground.
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