Plane

You look at Plane, and two immediate questions spring to your mind.  First, how long did it take the writers to come up with that title?  Second, how much did they get paid to do so?  The movie is an assembly of 80s action cliches that might have served well as a direct to streaming picture, but as a theatrical release (even one being pushed out in the dreary days of early January), comes up short.

Despite the presence of a recognizable star like Gerard Butler, the movie has an overly cheap feel with a rushed script, dim lighting, and a tone similar to those 80s Cannon action films that used to star Chuck Norris.  You know the ones.  The hero is a seeming everyman who just happens to be very adept at kicking all kinds of ass.  Apparently the filmmakers didn't want to go beyond being a mere homage.  The script isn't any better than it has to be, the supporting characters would be called cardboard if it wasn't an insult to perfectly good packing material, and the villain is as one-note as they come.  I know there's an audience for this out there, but if you can hold out, it will probably play better at home.

As is to be expected, the main character has a past.  Butler plays the wonderfully-named Brodie Torrance, who used to have a good commercial airline pilot job, until he got physical with an unruly passenger, and now he's stuck flying for a cheap East Asia airline that is never full, and skimps on just about everything.  He's hoping that his luck will turn around eventually, but given that this is an action movie, you know he's dreaming.  We also know he's in trouble, because one of his passengers on this flight is a prisoner named Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) who is being transported by an armed marshal.  Even if Louis is not the villain here, it's never a good sign in a movie when one of your passengers is a convict.

Sure enough, flying over the Philippines, the plane is struck by lightning, and Brodie is forced to make an emergency crash landing, which kills off some of the unnecessary passengers (like the marshal) and crew.  As Brodie tries to guide the survivors safely through the jungle, they are beset by armed militants who kidnap nearly everyone, and plan to use them as hostages.  Now Brodie and Louis have to work together to try to contact home free the hostages, and kill as many of the bad guys as possible.  Yes, Plane really is as simple as its title suggests, and while I can easily see this being fun, the screenplay never gives us a reason to care about anyone in this situation, so it never builds to any suspense.

Nothing is fleshed out here, especially not the buddy relationship that is supposed to slowly form between the pilot and the convict, who perform most of the action stunts and killing throughout the film.  In a movie like this, you have to create some unique banter between the heroes or maybe a unique angle, but it would seem that writers J.P. Davis and Charles Cumming forgot to get that far into the writing process when they were slapping this thing together.  Not only that, but the direction by action veteran Jean-Francois Richet is as basic as it comes.  The plane crash sequence is the one sequence that actually provides some thrills.  All the future firefights and gun battles are blandly shot, poorly edited, and instantly forgettable.

Plane is a January movie through and through, but even by those low standards, this still could have been more.  I kept on waiting for some sign that the movie wasn't totally asleep at the wheel - Some kind of wit in the dialogue, or perhaps a really well executed sequence, but it provides little to none.  My guess is you've seen dozens of movies just like this, and there's little reason to see this one.

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