Image courtesy of IMDb
Hello, everyone. For this review, I’ll be covering the first action movie of the year. Despite being a few plot twists short of a Lost episode*, it still has a few recognizable names in it (the biggest of course being Gerard Butler), and that is Plane.
The film follows Captain Brodie Torrance, a former military pilot turned commercial airline pilot. His latest flight is set to take the passengers to Honolulu from Singapore. Among the passengers is Louis Gaspare, a former member of the French Foreign Legion who is now a fugitive being extradited for homicide.
Unfortunately, the fact that a criminal is being brought onboard is the least of Torrance’s problems. During the flight, they’re caught in a storm, leaving Captain Torrance and his copilot no other choice but to land their badly damaged plane on an island in the Philippines.
Making matters worse, it happens to be an island overrun by a group of rebels, who do not hesitate to hold them captive. The conflict is so bad that the airline board’s only option is to send a private rescue team in to get everyone out.
In the meantime, Torrance can really only rely on Gaspare for help, but Gaspare might just actually be more useful than he was initially led to believe.
What Worked: The acting is very solid. Gerard Butler gives a great performance, as he shows that his character values everyone’s safety. He’s very determined to not only get himself home, but also everyone else. Plus, with his military background, he’s also capable of handling himself in a fight. This in turn also shows that Gerard Butler as an actor still has what it takes to do action-oriented roles, like Mike Banning in Olympus Has Fallen and its two (for now, soon to be three) sequels and to an extent King Leonidas in 300.
Aside from Gerard Butler, the biggest standouts for me were Mike Colter and Tony Goldwyn.
Mike Colter shows he still has the charisma he brought to the role of Luke Cage, as he has great chemistry/banter with Gerard Butler here.
Not only that, he gets some great moments throughout the movie, especially when it comes to how the rebels are being taken out. He’s very capable with guns and knives. At one point (and this isn’t a spoiler, by the way, as they showed a glimpse of this in the trailer), Gaspare even wields a sledgehammer in this movie**.
Some of those moments were actually during the breaks from the action. When it gets to them, it allows for some character development, and you get to learn more about him at the same time Torrance is.
As for Tony Goldwyn, if there’s one character who’s perhaps more determined to get everyone out than Torrance himself, it’s his character, Scarsdale (the airline company’s crisis manager).
In addition to getting some genuinely hilarious dialogue (an example of which is in the trailer), most of the decisions made in the movie are from him. Besides showing his character is good at his job, the decisions themselves, even the ones that aren’t from him, do actually make sense within the context of the story. That was nice to see, because so often we get characters in action movies that make stupid decisions which only work because of plot convenience.
Some other actors worth noting are Yoson An (who was previously in the Mulan remake) as Torrance’s copilot, Daniella Pineda (the Jurassic World sequels) as the main flight attendant, and Joey Slotnick (Hollow Man) as a businessman that’s one of the passengers.
For a January action movie, this is actually very well directed. This comes from Jean-François Richet, who directed the Assault on Precinct 13 remake, which I’ve heard is also quite good.
Also surprising for a January action movie is that it has editing that’s at least decent. There aren’t cuts every two seconds, and there isn’t shaky cam that more often than not is used nowadays to hide poor stunt work. It’s very competently edited***.
The action benefits greatly from that. They don’t hold anything back here, and since this is rated R, more graphic moments can be shown. Then again, this comes from Lionsgate, who brought us John Wick, The Expendables (even though the third one was PG-13 when it came out), the last two Rambo films, the last two Punisher films (the ones with Thomas Jane and Ray Stevenson), the list goes on. Since this came from them, and they usually do R-rated action movies, I was somewhat expecting this would be the case, and sure enough, it was.
If this was PG-13, that would’ve given them no choice but to use shaky cam and only show the aftermath of someone getting killed. It would’ve really hurt the movie.
One other thing that could’ve hurt the movie, even if it was PG-13, was that having a bunch of one-liners would’ve detracted from the overall tone (as this is a more serious action movie), so I was fine without them here. As it is, the script isn’t great, but it’s serviceable for the kind of movie this is.
What Didn’t Work: I really only have two major issues here.
The first is that although the score itself is pretty good, it doesn’t really stand out. It pains me to even say that, because it was co-composed by Marco Beltrami, who has so many great scores to his name, as I’ve mentioned in a couple reviews in the past. With this, the only track that comes close to being somewhat memorable is the one in the credits, yet even there, it won’t be long before you can hardly remember any of the music.
It’s a similar issue with the villains. Though they’re fine for the type of movie this is, the villains stand out a little more, but not by much. Now, I’m not saying every villain should be complex with an equally complex motivation (although it helps when a villain does have that). I’m saying they should have distinct character traits that justify why they’re as evil as they’re made out to be. Here, it’s the typical action movie villain: Whenever it’s a terrorist or a drug lord or anything like that, chances are their motivation is just as typical (usually money).
However, at least with someone like me who loves action movies, as long as the villains are still entertaining and it’s satisfying to see them get taken out in awesome ways, I can forgive that.
They’re fine enough for something like this to meet both of those criteria for me.
Overall: While it does have some problems, Plane is a very entertaining action movie, and for January, much like M3GAN was for horror, this was also a welcome surprise for action. Sometimes January action movies do fare better than horror movies released there, and sometimes they don’t. Thankfully, this is one of the better ones out there.
It’s well directed, well acted, and well edited, with an actually decent script. It was most surprising to me how much effort was put into those departments, because from the trailer, it didn’t look like it would have that much, and that the acting would be at least decent compared to everything else.
It gives you some great action with genuine character development in between, and it’s the performances of Gerard Butler and Mike Colter that really sell that.
Even though it’s likely on its way out of theaters now, and has already arrived on Digital, either way, I would still suggest checking this one out, too, folks. It’s a lot of fun, and if you're looking for something to watch on a Friday night or even on a Saturday, it’s perfect for that.
With two surprises in a row so far this year that I’ve covered (and ultimately a third for new releases not long after, but we’ll get to that later), this year could have potential. However, I’m only cautiously optimistic, given this decade’s track record so far, and I also don’t want to have too much hope so early in the year.
As it is, though, we’ll have to wait and see.
Next time, we go to my first Anniversary Review of the year, and it’s something that’s been a long time coming, folks.
*I felt like I had to make a Lost joke somewhere, since the event that kicks off both plots is a plane crash.
**This moment made me believe he could be a good choice to play Steel, should James Gunn ever decide to use him for his vision for DC. That, and the character himself deserves a second chance on the big screen anyway.
***Fun Fact: The editor, David Rosenbloom, previously edited The Way Back (one of the last movies to come out before COVID hit) and Deep Impact (one of the first movies I covered after COVID hit).