'Plane,' starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, is a movie for your lizard brain — the part of you that craves basic sensations. The part that expresses ...
The violence is visceral and presented with just enough authenticity to make you quiver. He just wants hostages and money, and he doesn’t seem shy about delivering on the promise to kill prisoners — or his own men — if he doesn’t get his way. The context, however, is unreal enough that you don’t have to think too hard about it. His developing relationship with Torrance is compelling and handled without much fuss: It’s all sweaty stares, brief exchanges, and the occasional knowing grin between two beefy guys in a temporary marriage of convenience who grow to respect (and kill alongside) each other. And because the flight has so few passengers, the powers that be at Trailblazer refuse to let Torrance fly around a nasty-looking storm hovering in his path, as the additional fuel required would cost too much. We learn that Torrance is a proud Scot who once served in Britain’s Royal Air Force, and we know he can hold his own — though he does gag a bit after his first kill on the island. He stuffs the picture full of them — burly, single-shot beatdowns, beheadings, stabbings, heads crushed with giant hammers. There are only 14 travelers on this particular flight, which enhances the sense that Torrance is a man out of step with the times: He can fly the damn plane, but it’s not as if anyone wants to ride it. In Plane, he’s Captain Brodie Torrance, a middle-aged single dad and pilot stuck flying a Singapore-to-Tokyo route on New Year’s Eve for the low-rent airline Trailblazer. Much of Plane does not actually take place on a plane, but there’s little cause for alarm. These men have acquired a nostalgic glow, and Butler in particular has become a kind of people’s avatar for the way action movies used to be. The part that expresses itself in grunts.
The dumb title—the most memorable thing about it—isn't an artistic statement, it's an alibi.
[Paul Ben-Victor](/cast-and-crew/paul-ben-victor)), uses his list of contacts trying to locate and then protect the passengers, including those American guys who come with their own equipment. A no-BS PR hotshot named Scarsdale, played by [Tony Goldwyn](/cast-and-crew/tony-goldwyn), has all the answers and plenty of 'tude, too, like when he barks, "If you have New Year's Eve Plans, I just canceled them." (My preview audience audibly adored Gun more than everything and everyone else in "Plane.”) Everyone else on-screen, from Butler's simply exhausted pilot to Colter's fugitive-maybe-looking for redemption to the super-scowling Filipino militia leader named Junmar ( Brodie, with his history in the RAF and a gun secretly in his pants, brings him along the mysterious terrain to find help. He's fared better as a last action hero of a certain type of movie, and the biggest problem with "Plane" throughout is that it isn't wilder; it does not revel appropriately enough in its open dumbness. The scuffle that ensues is impressive, with the camera mostly holding on Butler's face as he wrestles with this bigger dude in tight quarters.
Plane, the new action movie starring 300's Gerard Butler and Mike Colter (Marvel's Luke Cage) is a surprisingly deft thriller that cares a lot about planes, ...
The third hero of Plane, Scarsdale does not have patience for governments or corporate face-saving, giving the film much of both its humor and its action — the former by steamrolling the suits in the room, the latter by hiring a crew of private military operatives to help extract the passengers. Both actors are deft enough to make their characters feel like vulnerable flesh and blood — Butler as the world-weary and desperate idealist, and Colter as the wrongfully accused and highly skilled pragmatist. Butler [claimed in a recent interview](https://twitter.com/KevinMcCarthyTV/status/1612822621065822209) that he fought to keep the title — which, in the handful of times I’ve seen the trailer in theaters, universally elicits laughter — and even called the titular transport “the star of the film.” Watch the movie, though, and one might start to believe him: The first 20 minutes are full of plane minutiae, like preflight checks, flight attendant rituals, crew small talk, annoying passengers, and lots of accurate-sounding radio chatter. When said warlord discovers the plane, he takes the passengers hostage, missing only Brodie and Louis. Once Plane reaches cruising altitude (not sorry), the most surprising thing about it is its straight-faced execution.
The actor plays a pilot tasked with an emergency landing and then an island full of criminals in a B-movie that needs some more thrills.
Instead, we get bullets, a boring amount of them in fact, with a finale based around who can shoot the most before that plane comes back into play. It’s just about diverting enough for the most part but there’s something a little off about its pacing, French director Jean-François Richet (who peaked a while back with his propulsive Mesrine movies) struggling to corral his moving parts, suspense never really arriving as it should. A more accurate title would then be Island, but Plane is perhaps best at least for instructing audience on the best location to watch the film, half-awake, tipsy on wine served from a litre bottle. But there’s a lightning storm which forces Butler to make an emergency landing on a remote island in the Philippines. Everything you need to know about Plane can more easily be summed up by Butler’s absurd character name – Brodie Torrance, something one would expect to find in a half-price airport potboiler. [social media jabs](https://twitter.com/JonBershad/status/1606076080560910336) because of its ridiculous title, the Butler of it all, a film about a plane called Plane, is a January movie through and through, filling empty screens just because they need filling, doing the least but at an aggressively loud volume.
Gerard Butler like Harrison Ford with muscles after eight beers. Plane probably best Gerard Butler movie ever made.
When you think “PR guy David Scarsdale” you probably think bad guy, guy in suit Gerard Butler beat up. Plane perfect movie for Gerard Butler solidify Gerard Butler brand action movie. Plane you see Gerard Butler fight, and even look like how Gerard Butler really fight. Plane that kind movie. That kind character you think probably name “David Scarsdale.” But in Plane, PR guy David Scarsdale actually smart one! Plane not that kind movie. Because this Gerard Butler movie, you know Gerard Butler beat people up. I try not spoil Plane by saying who get beat up by Gerard Butler, but you take my word, Gerard Butler beat people up. He say “Hey, maybe we go around?” but plane boss say “No just go right over, you fine. In Plane, first scene Gerard Butler character say “I’m from Scotland.” Perfect! Just make all Gerard Butler character Scotland people, I always say. Plane movie no unnecessary part, just like title.
I guess all the dynamic flight-in-peril names had been taken? Jodie Foster had “Flightplan,” Liam Neeson had “Non-Stop.” Samuel L. Jackson had to deal with ...
But if you have the will and ability to turn off the vast majority of your brain and see how a haggard guy saves the day, “Plane” will satisfy. “Plane” has no coherent politics (and woe unto you if you try to interpret a message), little internal logic and foregos twists in favor of an escalating series of complications. You are getting a simply structured, straightforward action romp — the kind of R-rated, meaningless entertainment that once populated drive-ins and extra multiplex screens but has become a relative rarity, at least in theatrical distribution.
In the generically-titled action film, Plane, Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) is a pilot for Trailblazer airlines, a third-tier carrier. And with Plane, cynics ...
(Hey, the prisoner’s skills as a killer come in handy!) The film is best when Colter’s Gaspare is in charge. The death toll starts climbing even before Gaspare finds a sledgehammer and uses it to pick off the locals in an effort to rescue the passenger hostages. Torrance enlists the aid of Gaspare for his rescue mission efforts. But Butler is great to watch, resigned to some of the situations he faces and yet compassionate when it comes to caring for his passengers, especially during their unexpected layover. The beefy Scotsman—and he is playing a Scotsman here—gets banged up, beaten up, bloodied, shot at, and more over the course of Torrance’s very long, very bad day. He even calmly reassures a worried passenger the jet is “pretty much indestructible” before takeoff.
These are the action movies with a bearded dad protagonist whose character basically boils down to “I have a family.” Laugh at it all you want, I also rolled my ...
And obviously, while the movie is pretty good for a dad movie, it still ultimately is still a dad movie. His character provides a bit of greyness to the movie, as he is a murderer. The opening action sequence with the plane landing has a very good sense of pacing and escalation, as opposed to most movies that just have a plane explode in fire and VFX budget and cut to the stunt double in the wreckage. In fact, this would be perfect to spend time on a long flight. And to give credit where credit’s due, this is actually one of the best dad movies out there. It shows the director wasn’t going to waste my time and instead show me more of Gerard Butler choking people to death with his glistening pecs. These are the action movies with a bearded dad protagonist whose character basically boils down to “I have a family.” Laugh at it all you want, I also rolled my eyes the moment I saw the film very clearly play the daughter card, but it is a genre that has stuck around for a reason. After all, his Has Fallen trilogy also provide the barest of character while putting most of its effort onto its premise and action. And this simple characterization can help the director too, because now they only need to allot a minimal amount of screentime to get audiences mildly invested and turn their focus onto the action. All you need to do is take the most mundane word, slap it on a poster, and suddenly it looks and sounds much more important than it is. It also cuts down the need for further characterization outside of the main cast. [Jean-François Richet](https://loudandclearreviews.com/tag/jean-francois-richet/), Plane follows Brodie Torrance ( [Gerard Butler](https://loudandclearreviews.com/tag/gerard-butler/)), the pilot of the commercial airliner Trailblazer 119.