Plane" A Movie With Gerard Butler"

 

Writers: Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis

Director: Jean-François Richet

Somebody needs to give Gerard Butler a holiday, not content with saving American presidents and whole cities or masterminding a nefarious plan to bring down an entire nineteenth-century French opera house because the girl he is obsessed with isn’t the lead, now Director Jean-François Richet has him face further trauma as an airline pilot turned action hero who not only has to land a faulty aeroplane during a violent electrical storm but then protect the remaining passengers from violent separatists who want to kill them all. It is all pretty standard Butler fare and you know how it is going to end from the moment that it begins but Richet’s movie sits happily in the bucket of films that are basically Die Hard without troubling your reason for 105-minutes.

When forced to crash land on a remote island overrun by lawless mercenaries and sectarian groups, the passengers of Captain Brodie Torrance’s commercial flight are soon targeted by those looking to kill or ransom them. Torrance makes a break for it with prisoner Louis who was being transported on the same flight and proves an effective baddie-killing partner. Will Brodie manage to make contact with US agencies to come and rescue them and can he make it back to his passengers before they are captured?

Plane presents a pretty rubbish situation for its characters – not only must they endure a turbulence-filled journey and a death-defying plummet to land on an isolated island, but they quickly become the hostages of some inexplicably violent madmen who all but shout ‘take me to your leader.’ Their respect for authority is sweet but that is a pretty bad day on any account and you can only imagine the customer feedback forms and compensation claims being submitted to the airline once they finally get home.

Fortunately Brodie just happens to be an ex-military pilot with a teenage daughter to get back for so he takes care of it all. Richet’s film, written by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis, had an essentially confined location with limited contact with the outside world, evil henchmen, no notable roles for women and a lone hero in partnership with an unlikely helper. Guns appear as if from nowhere which everyone knows how to use and with plentiful bullets as well as being perfect shots when the baddies are not. It is all pretty standard action movie stuff, rattling along at a decent pace, and although there may be a couple of brutal deaths, it is mostly pretty watchable gung-ho business as usual. You could even check out for a while and still know what is going on when you come back.

Gerard Butler does what he does, sentimental action hero with a semi-soldierly sense of duty and responsibility for innocent people, runs about, has some hefty fight scenes and generally gets the job done. His Brodie doesn’t exactly have a personality or complex existence but that’s not really required here. Support comes from Mike Coltar Louis and various admin bods in a police meets spy meets airline rescue service, but it doesn’t matter who they are either, they turn up in the nick of time as always and make it a fairer fight.

Plane is pretty smooth sailing for the viewer, getting you from A to B without too many speedbumps along the way and no unexpected forced landings. Don’t try too hard to unpick any of this, just sit back and let Captain Brodie fly you to safety.