(3 / 5)
Gerard Butler stars in a lightly-engineered action-thriller whose pleasures are as simple as its title.
Easily formulated as Die Hard meets Lost, Plane serves up gritty run n’ gun in the sun fun.
When a freak lightening strike forces him to crash-land on a remote island of the Philippines, budget airline pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler) has to figure out how to get his meagre bunch of passengers back to civilisation – that’s if the pissed-off insurgents don’t get them first. As chance would have it, there’s a handcuffed prisoner onboard, Louis (Mike Colter), who happens to be handy with a firearm – or anything, really.
Plane‘s screenplay, written by Charles Cumming and J. P. Davis, is nuts-and-bolts even by B-movie thriller standards, though the paper-thin characterisations of the passengers and crew make for a refreshingly no-frills. Butler and Colter make for an impressive, if slightly one-note pairing of sweaty, beardy hulks, taking on apolitically generic thuggish bad guys, led by beardy, scary Hajan (Claro De Los Reyes). Director Jean-François Richet makes involving use of shaky-cam, particularly in a brutal one-take that sets Plane apart from many its straight-to-streaming brethren.
Butler’s endearingly down-to-earth presence helps to sell his extraordinary everyman persona, complete with daughter (Haleigh Hekking) waiting for him in Hawaii. Colter’s narrow-eyed coolness provides a neat counterpoint. Paul Ben-Victor and Tony Goldwyn play two of the company support staff trying to get Brodie and Co. home; neither of whom – SPOILER – is evil, despite their access to plot-convenient mercenaries.
Plane isn’t going to lift the quality of anyone’s watch-list this year, but it has enough charm and panache to put it ahead of most of the dry, formulaic stuff that Butler’s fellow B-movie contender Liam Neeson has been putting out of late.1Plane is decent, mid-range popcorn fare and there’s enough panache on display here to justify the trip.
Plane is available in cinema from January 27th, 2023
- With the exception, maybe, of similarly rated The Ice Road.
