REVIEW: Plane
Rated R • 1 hour, 47 minutes • The bottom line: A typical B action movie that lacks emotional stakes
Synopsis
Commercial pilot Brodie Torrance navigates his damaged plane to a successful emergency landing on sparsely populated island in the Philippines, only to learn it’s controlled by a local militia. While trying to find help, most of the passengers are taken as hostages by the group, leaving Torrance and one of his passengers—a convicted murderer—to make plans to secure their freedom.
Director: Jean-François Richet
Writers: Screenplay by Charles Cumming and JP Davis; story by Cumming
Key Cast: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Lilly Krug, Yoson An and Remi Adeleke
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Marc Butan, Gerard Butler and Alan Siegel
What worked
The action scenes—particularly the gun fights—are immersive and tense
Mike Colter, despite a thin story, elevates every scene in which he appears
What didn’t work
Most of the emotional stakes, and their accompanying performances, feel hollow
The film’s musical score is out of touch with what happens on-screen
In many ways, Plane feels like it’s behind its time, a film from the early 2010s in the same vein of “disaster” dramas as San Andreas (2015), Olympus Has Fallen (2013) and Captain Phillips (2013). But unlike each of those films, it falls flat in its delivery across the board, with a stale story that is as intense as it is interesting—that is, not very. And the emotional stakes? Even when the plane is plummeting to the ground, those are nowhere to be found.
Overall, Plane just didn’t work for me.
The premise of the film isn’t a ridiculous one—and for many it is certainly a frightening prospect: An international flight is struck by lighting over the South China Sea, causing it to short-circuit and lose power, leading to it crashing (safely) in a distant island in southeast Asia under the command of Captain Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler). The fact that such an occurrence isn’t an impossibility is enough to tether the concept to the imaginations of most viewers, generally to great effect; nobody would want to be on that plane. Throw in the fact there’s a murderer on the plane (he’s being extradited to Canada) and that the island is run by militants, and you’ve got great B movie fodder.
(It’s important to note that I’m generally not tackling the practicality of the script in this review, because what’s the point? This isn’t a movie one goes into expecting authenticity, but rather looking for a good time.)
Save for a few cool gun fights, the first act is really where the intrigue of the story ends, though the entire story is almost entirely predictable. I won’t spoil it here, but think of the most likely outcome to this kind of film. Got it? You’re probably right.
The biggest shortcoming of the film isn’t its predictability, though. It’s that it fails to deliver on giving the audience even one strong emotional bond between any of its characters—even Butler’s character and his daughter ( Haleigh Hekking). Worse: Any time an effort is made to build character or relationships, there’s no time allotted for those emotions to resonate with audiences, because the direction and writing are more concerned with continually noting the perils of the island—telling the audience, rather than showing. There are several times in the film that felt like they could be emotional linchpins, if they were just given a few seconds to breathe.
Butler does his best with the script, but in the end it’s just another film in which his character has a hero complex and decides to go to the ends of the earth to save those around him (admittedly, that’s plenty for most people watching this film). As far as the rest of the cast goes, Mike Colter is the most noteworthy, as he uses commanding body language and a strong tone to embody his role as the murderer, Louis Gaspare—despite the lousy script and a shoddily written, paltry backstory. I don’t expect him to earn any accolades for the performance, but it’s a great return to form for the actor I best know as Marvel’s Luke Cage (albeit in a role that doesn’t scratch that dramatic itch one would hope for from a performer of his caliber).
The gun fights in the movie, while not tremendous, are among its only real highlights. They are well choreographed and felt realistic, giving Plane its few moments where things felt truly dangerous, in my view. What’s more, the handlers on the film seemed to have done a great job with educating the actors on proper handling of firearms—save for one scene where Butler’s character, despite being a military veteran, picks up a gun as if he’s never seen one before in his life.
The visual effects in the film aren’t great, but they aren’t bad. However, the musical score is a different story, as it oftentimes felt out of sync with the scenes, striking low notes at certain high points in the film. and vice versa. For me, scores are most effective when I don’t notice them outside the context of the film. But throughout Plane, I found myself confused by the musical direction and choices—in a bad way.
This movie isn’t one that I expect will stick around for a long while in the theaters. But if you come across it on streaming and are just looking for an action flick to have on in the background, it might be up your alley.
Bottom line: A typical B action movie that lacks emotional stakes, Plane is probably worth checking out when it hits a streaming service and you have some time to kill. Score: 4/10