Plane
Action movies do not dominate the box-office like they used to. Part of that is the tastes of younger audiences hues towards the superhero variety, which seems antithetical to what we got in the era of Sly, Arnold and Bruce Willis, but is more of a high-concept extension of those films. Both are built on big ideas, and often, the main character is seen as an indestructible force. The relatively “grounded” era of action film supremacy is gone, but the market remains, mainly on VOD and international sales. Most of Gerard Butler’s films land in the latter, and “Plane” is probably the most notable of his in the genre since the “Has Fallen” films. It’s also probably my favorite film he’s done.
After “Die Hard,” we had a run of reductionist takes on action films where the blueprint was “‘Die Hard’ on a ________.” We’ve had a few different “‘Die Hard’ on a plane” riffs over the past 35 years, but the thing about Jean-François Richet’s thriller is that, generic title aside, this isn’t that. It’s a survival thriller about a plane- where Butler is the pilot- gets taken down from the sky by a storm, and then, where they crash land is overrun by militias, putting he and the passengers in more danger. Potentially silly, but also a lot of fun. More fun than it has a right to be.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and Butler’s Brodie Torrance is a pilot out of Singapore. He’s got a red eye flight to Tokyo before making his way to Maui, where he will spend the New Year with his daughter. A late addition to the flight is someone being extradited to the US for homicide, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter). Normally, you would expect that to be a big part of the issue Torrance and the crew and 14 passengers have to deal with, but he’ll turn out to be a big part of the reason they survive after a mid-air electrical outage that causes them to have to crash land on a remote island in the Philippines. When he and his co-pilot realize where they are, Torrance must decide to risk being alone with Gaspare to try to find a way to get help for them.
Did you know that little-known airlines can afford mercenaries? This is not one of the big airlines, so when one of their executives (Tony Goldwyn) decides to call in a team of mercenaries to help after they’ve figured out the plane’s location, the movie moves way off into fantasy land. That being said, Richet keeps things moving nimbly and energetically as each complication builds on the other. Yes, it gets ridiculous, but that’s why we watch movies like this. The difference between this one and others is that there are rooting interests, there are stakes, and they are laid out plainly throughout the film. “Plane” is a generic title, and has a lot of generic elements, but it delivers the goods is silly action movie entertainment.
