Mark Reviews Movies: PLANE

Plane, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 12, 2023

The generically titled Plane is bookended by a pair of effective sequences. As for what happens in between those two scenes, it's a mixed bag, with none of it rising to the movie's opening and closing heights or falling on its face with any kind of ineptitude. This is a wholly competent but only sporadically engaging thriller.

The disappointment, of course, is that, with the setup and the extended finale, the filmmakers show us what they could be doing the entire time. The screenplay by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis features some familiar characters who are, regardless, filled with at least some potential. It revolves around a premise with a couple of dread-inducing angles that could make up a decent plot, and those noteworthy sequences show that the duo, along with director Jean-François Richet, know how to establish stakes, raise tension, and follow through with some over-the-top yet logical-enough action. We're mainly left wondering what could have been.

Then again, maybe there's not too much to anticipate when one considers how all of it begins. We meet Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler), a pilot for a commercial airline (a fictional one, natch, considering all of the terrible things that happen to and near this plane), who has a daughter (played by Haleigh Hekking) to meet in Hawaii. The movie offers up a dead wife/mother for their bond to be even more important.

Anyway, Brodie has a job to do on his way to reunite with the daughter—namely fly a plane. There's some bad weather along the flightpath, and of course, some persistent, unthinking corporate guy wants Brodie to fly through the storm to save on time and money. That's one problem facing Brodie, his co-pilot Dele (Yoson An), the crew led by flight attendant Bonnie (Daniella Pineda), and a dozen passengers who, as a group, serve as a plot device more than anything else.

The other big, potential problem arrives before those other passengers. He's Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), a prisoner being transported to face trial. The crime is an alleged murder that occurred more than 20 years ago, but let's, like the screenplay, put a pin in that until it becomes a bit more relevant.

There's that early sequence of spectacle with which to deal, after all. It comes when the plane, flying through that storm, is struck by lightning, leaving Brodie with no communications and no navigation devices except for a tablet computer—meaning there's no way to tell anyone where this plane is going to have to make an emergency landing, if he even knew specifically where that is.

Much of the sequence takes place inside the cockpit and cabin of the plane, as Brodie more or less glides the plane through the darkness and turbulence tosses everyone/everything around inside. Some decent visual effects show the plane being tossed about by winds, but Richet's focus on the in-the-moment processes of such an emergency is what really sells the sequence.

After that and with the plane safely landed but inoperable on an island in the South China Sea, the screenwriters start to seem hampered by trying to figure out what could happen next. Obviously, everyone needs to be rescued—and survive in the meantime, too. Gradually, Brodie realizes there's nothing to be done on or near the plane, so he sets off to find a building he spotted during the landing. To keep the potentially dangerous prisoner from causing any trouble, the captain volunteers Louis to join him on the expedition.

A lot of this is simply offering up exposition and delaying the inevitable conflict that will come at everyone from the island. The setup and buildup create just a bit too much anticipation for that inevitable turn, as well as just enough of a distraction from the potential of this situation and these characters. The screenplay regularly abandons Brodie, Louis, and the other castaways for planning sessions and debates at the airline's headquarters, where fix-it man Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn) organizes a search-and-rescue mission with a ragtag group of mercenaries. Meanwhile, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), the head of a violent separatist group that has made this island its home, decides to take the stranded foreigners hostage for ransom.

Such diversions certainly diminish the pacing and immediacy of the crew and passengers' survival effort, while promising a lot of action that will eventually arrive, once everything is in place. Despite all of the information being revealed during this lengthy section, little of it has to do with these characters, so it's a good thing our two leads are played by Butler and Colter. The former is dependably and equally tough, sympathetic, and just vulnerable enough who wants nothing more than to see his daughter but is willing to risk all of that to protect his crew and passengers. Colter puts on a rough edge that's clearly hiding a core that's about as noble as the pilot, and the two actors have an easy rapport that goes a long way.

Those performances are important, because it takes a while for Plane to build up to its big finale. That sequence may be generally predictable, but it includes multiple stages and adds assorted complications to make it more than some dull, repetitive shootout. In other words, it goes just above and just beyond enough that one wishes the rest of the movie took the same approach.

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