Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 47 mins
Director. Jean-François Richet
Cast. Yoson An, Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Daniella Pineda, Evan Dane Taylor.
Rating. 54%
Review.
For some people, it is all too easy to turn a nose up at Gerard Butler’s body of work. Yes, he appeared in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle Of Life, The Bounty Hunter and Gods Of Egypt, but he also appeared in Dear Frankie, 300, Coriolanus, The Vanishing and Greenland. Greenland, for example, is a terrific, end of the world survival thriller, and one that demonstrates that Butler really can deliver intelligent escapist drama.
In Plane, Butler plays Captain Brodie Torrance, a former Royal Air Force pilot now flying commercial routes for Trailblazer Airlines in South East Asia. Clunky exposition outlines the character in a few minutes, before he is briefed by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer (Otis Winston) on the transport of a convicted murderer, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) on Flight 119, Singapore to Honolulu along with twelve other passengers and a flight crew of five.
The first act, in particular, is reasonably entertaining. When the aircraft encounters the mother of all tropical storms, and inevitably loses communications and electronics, Torrance has to land the stricken passenger jet on an unknown island. The island in question is the volcanic island of Jolo, in the southwest Philippines - an island ruled by lawless separatists, who will more than likely ransom, and/or execute, the passengers.
Director Jean-François Richet stages some intense, dramatic combat sequences, including a surprisingly visceral and brutal shootout reminiscent of The Wild Geese finale. But the frenetic camerawork - which admittedly added to the dramatic spectacle of the emergency landing sequence - subsequently, is not only a distraction but often feels superfluous during certain action scenes.
There are moments when credibility is stretched to breaking point, but Plane is a film that knows exactly what it is and is not ashamed of it either - a solid throwback action movie that feels like a relic from a bygone era.
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