Some find the trend of ultra-simple titles for blood simple action movies—Cocaine Bear, Snakes on a Plane—refreshingly honest, if not appropriately dumb, but this Gerard Butler vehicle, which was produced by Butler himself, would seem to be the last word in the trend. In fact, the title is so amorphously generic that it could be about anything and everything. As might be expected, it’s mainly about a plane crash, with Butler playing the resourceful pilot who takes his responsibility as the captain of his ship very seriously, meaning he thinks of the welfare of his surviving crew and passengers first. For the most part, the action is as generic as the title, but up until the guns and violence kick in, the movie does a fair job of explaining the mechanics of a commercial flight and what a flight crew really does in an emergency. The director, Jean-François Richet, is meticulous in his setup, and so we understand the stakes from the get-go. The flight depicted is a less-than-half-full New Years Eve jump from Singapore to Tokyo. Capt. Brodie Torrance (Butler) sees a storm brewing over the Philippines and decides to fly around it, which would add an hour or two to the flight time. Since many of the passengers are going to Tokyo to connect to other flights, the flight manager says no way. 

Richet walks us through the flight prep, the takeoff, and the relatively uneventful first part of the journey, showing how Brodie and his co-pilot, Samuel (Yoson An), maneuver through the storm by attempting to fly above it. He also, in true disaster movie fashion, samples the passenger list, settling uncomfortably on a law enforcement type handcuffed to a fugitive, Gaspare (Mike Colter), who has been wanted for murder, though the fact that he committed this crime when he was a minor grants him a certain measure of sympathy that will come in handy later. And once lightning hits the plane and knocks out the electrical system, including all communications, the nuts-and-bolts exposition really comes into its own, as Torrance miraculously crash lands the aircraft in the middle of a Philippine jungle with only two casualties—one of whom is the law enforcement guy.

After that, the movie becomes real conventional real fast. Torrance goes into full survival mode while the folks back at the airline’s HQ in New York struggle to locate the downed plane and, understanding that this part of the Philippines is controlled by rebel forces who regularly hold foreigners for ransom, call in “private assets” for assistance. The rebels, of course, show up on schedule and immediately terrorize the passengers, doing nothing helpful for the image of Muslim separatists in the Philippines. It’s up to Torrance, who, it turns out, learned how to fly in the RAF (Butler for once is permitted to wield his natural Scots accent), and Gaspare, who spent his fugitive years as a foreign mercenary, to battle the rebels and save the passengers, and then get the plane airborne again. Given that the action pales in terms of excitement when compared to the flying sequences at the beginning and at the end, Plane does justify its title, since it’s really the star of the movie. 

Opens Nov. 23 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024). 

Plane home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Plane Film Holdings, LLC (c) Kenneth Rexrach