Review: Plane

 

Briefly the butt of internet snickering for its somewhat blunt title - and yet Air escaped unscathed - Plane is not a film of subtlety. Nor would anyone want it to be: a fancier title would just be wasting everyone's time, and this is an all-action thriller that knows that wasting time is the worst crime this kind of film can commit.

Gerard Butler is Brodie Torrance, the kind of two-fisted pilot who is too good for the shabby airline he's flying for but it's the best he can do after (heroically) punching out an unruly passenger. Unfortunately, that means he's now working for the kind of bosses who think having him fly through a storm to save on fuel costs is a good idea. It is not.

A big part of the fun of Plane - and Plane is a lot of fun - is the way it rapidly cycles through genres fast enough to touch on all the good stuff without ever making it too obvious that we've seen it all before. So of course the storm messes up the flight and we get a condensed version of a disaster movie before Butler manages to safely crash-land (but in a way that leaves the plane intact, which will become important later) on a seemingly deserted island in the Philippines.

Okay, so clearly the next genre up is the "we're trapped on an island and one of the passengers is a killer", because I forgot to mention earlier that one of the few passengers on this New Years Eve flight - yes, Torrance is trying to get home to his family - is a killer (Mike Colter, who already has a spin-off set up) who's been on the run for decades and is being taken back to the US. His guard died in the pre-crash turbulence; can Butler handle a hardened criminal with nothing to lose?

Forget that, because it's time for the next twist. Turns out that the island isn't deserted - well, it has been deserted by any kind of government or law enforcement, because it's the home base for a bunch of terrorists who like holding tourists for ransom then making them star in snuff movies. Can Torrance get the passengers off the island without being detected? Of course not. Time for plan B, where the B stands for "blowing stuff up".

There's a few entertaining diversions along the way - the airline puts together a crisis team and hires mercs for a rescue mission, only when Butler manages to make a call to the airline after the crash the operator thinks it's a prank - but for the most part this is solid meat & potatoes genre fodder with just enough going on to keep things fresh. 

Butler's gruff charm carries this a long way, and French director Francois Richet's non-nonsense approach to this occasionally nonsensical story does the rest. Butler's character is noticeably appalled by killing; he's much more of a "I've got to save these people" than "time to take out the trash" type, which stops this from completely losing touch with reality, at least as far as the on-ground carnage is concerned. 

Once they get in the air, all bets are off.

- Anthony Morris