'Plane' A Review

Plane is an action movie about commercial pilot Brodie Torrance(Gerard Butler) who is flying a late light flight from Singapore to Honolulu via Tokyo. At the last minute a prisoner, Louis Gaspare(Mike Colter), is taken on board being extradited to Canada. When severe weather necessitates an emergency landing on a remote island populated by a hostile militia group Torrance and Gaspare team up to ensure the passengers safety.

Butler continues his domination as the top seeded B-movie hero/villain, here in the hero incarnation- a good dad, a good pilot, who will do whatever it takes to make sure his passengers get to where they need to go! And he does it well, you can't argue with his screen presence or his commitment. He, and the movies he's been making over the last decade or so, harken back to an era of 90's action flicks that are just simple, morally uncomplicated, fun. And there's a market for that, not only because of the current fade of 90's nostalgia but because of how bloated the movie landscape is with superhero movies and action movies that seem required to be morally opaque. It's great to see Colter and he plays off Butler well but he's a bit less confident, perhaps not totally sure of what kind of movie he's in. Still, the two make a fun shoot-em-up duo. The supporting cast are all solid, particularly Daniella Pineda as the lead flight attendant, nice to see her getting work after her great(but gone-too-soon) turn in Cowboy Bebop.

Visually pretty impressive, surprisingly assured mix of CGI and practicality, even if there are green screens and studio sets in play it always helps to have multiple actual human bodies in a space to create a necessary sense of tangibility. The production on the whole is meat-and-potatoes but it works and mirrors what the movie itself is- straight-up, down-the-middle, entertainment. There are a number of surprising things about it, for one the first twenty minutes or so focus utterly on commercial flight procedure, in a way that's actually pretty riveting and serves almost as a reprimand to the pandemic increase in commercial flight bad behavior but does so in a way that is implicit rather than accusatory. The other real success is the tone- kinda sincere, kinda campy, a little heart, a fair amount of action, all fun.

A clinic in the middle budget action space- pure entertainment. Top Gun: Maverick was a big budget throwback, Plane, and by extension Butler, holds the ground for a type of movie that has virtually been edged out of the market place, forgotten, but is nonetheless necessary.

Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.

See It.