REVIEW: Plane (2023)

Movie Reviews

Half of Plane is a good movie; the other half is a mad dash to the credits that sacrifices payoffs, character relationships and development, tension, and a logical narrative to… I don’t know what end. It’s a shame because before it decides to drive off a cliff – or maybe just a small butte – Plane is on its way to being a thrilling action movie with some compelling characters played by good actors. Most of the pieces are here, but much like the titular aircraft, it falls apart when it should be soaring.

When a plane flying across the Pacific is struck by lightning while passing through a storm, the pilot, Captain Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler), has to make an emergency landing on an island in the Philippines. As he rallies his crew, comforts the passengers, and tries to find a way to get them home, Torrance discovers that they’re stranded on an island called Jolo, which is ruled by a violent rebel militia. When the militia finds them, he’s got to team up with Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), a prisoner who was being transported to America to stand trial for murder, to save the passengers from the bloodthirsty rebels.

For about an hour, Plane draws you into its story. This is the setup portion, where we meet the main characters and get invested in the disaster as it happens. Gerard Butler is an easy entry point as Brody Torrance, a dad who worked hard at a lousy job to put his daughter through college. (How he got himself forced into taking the least-desirable flights is something I don’t want to spoil; it’s not a huge reveal or anything, but it’s one of those moments that instantly make you like a character.) His co-pilot, Samuel Dele (Yoson An), is a younger family man, essentially Torrance twenty years ago, feeling the strain of being away from his wife and kids but enjoying his job all the same. The passengers and flight attendants aren’t exactly three-dimensional, but there’s just enough to make them feel human and for you to want to see them survive. Once the plane goes down, we also meet the owner of the airline, played by 90s character actor Paul Ben-Victor, and the mysterious Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn, who’s terrific in his small role), a crisis specialist the airline calls in to advise them on how to navigate the crash.

Throughout this early section of the movie, Plane is paced just right. The character introductions, the setups, the crash sequence, the expected home base shouting matches, and the rocky road to recovery on the ground play out leisurely enough to get you invested but with enough building tension to make you wonder when the other shoe will drop. It’s when the action starts that Plane switches to autopilot and never re-engages. What was a methodically unfolding story suddenly morphs into an A-B-C plot with no life or urgency. Torrance has to get to the passengers, Torrance has to find the captured passengers, Torrance has to figure out how to rescue the passengers, beat, beat, beat, and nothing more. Plane devolves so drastically because the expert pacing is thrown out the window once the militia enters the picture. Suddenly, it rolls on so fast that there’s never any time to establish things like the danger the passengers are in, the roadblocks Torrance has to face to get to them, or the timeframe in which he must locate the militia base. It’s all just there, flat and boring, killing time till the movie can end.

But the biggest victim of the derailment (mixed metaphor?) is Mike Colter. Colter, who was fantastic as Luke Cage on the Netflix Marvel shows, is great again as Gaspare, a murderer who’s on his way to a life sentence or worse when the plane crashes. As with the rest of the characters, Gaspare has some great setup despite not saying much throughout the first half. He seems mostly resigned to his fate, with his only bursts of anger coming when other passengers try to film him or take his picture. (There’s an excellent shot of one of the other passengers looking at Gaspare in fear while wearing a neck cushion; this guy is in total comfort while Gaspare is doomed, yet he’s the one who’s afraid.) And Gaspare is contrasted with Torrance well; Torrance was in the Royal Air Force but never got the “sexy” missions, while Gaspare was in the French Foreign Legion, doing a lot of dirty work for next to nothing outside of his freedom. The stage is set for a terrific two-man story of an unlikely pairing that could be just what each man needs, as they are what the passengers need.

But it’s not to be. When the action starts, Plane forgets it was once a movie about characters and moves Torrance and Gaspare from scene to scene like checkers pieces (there’s not enough thought involved for chess), a jump here and there with no emotion or humanity. Nothing that was building between the two leads is resolved, and when it’s all over, our time spent with them feels like a waste. And it isn’t just them; there’s no payoff for anyone. For example, Joey Slotnick plays an annoying, rude, germophobic passenger, but nothing comes of these traits; he doesn’t get a chance to renounce them or use them to help anyone. He’s a walking prop, like everyone else in the latter half of Plane. Other characters go by with no resolutions either; they just disappear when they’re no longer needed. The villains are blanks, bad guys who exist to be bad guys, and while their motivations are plain and don’t need further explanation, it would have been nice to give them a little color beyond “bad guy is bad” or even, God forbid, a personality.

On a technical level, Plane is fine. Director Jean-François Richet, who helmed the mediocre Blood Father and the pretty damn good Assault on Precinct 13 remake (a rare instance where I liked both versions of a movie), doesn’t bring a whole lot of visual panache to the action. As precise as some of the shots in the quieter scenes are, the action is messy and removed – save for a couple of good moments, especially Mike Colter’s work with… okay, I won’t tell you. There’s a lot of shaky cam, and while it’s not nearly as bad as most films that use it, it’s not particularly good either. The score is as generic as it gets, nowhere near the great Marco Beltrami’s best work. Following on the heels of the one-two punch of Bullet Train and Violent Night from 87North and with John Wick: Chapter 4 due out in a couple of months, Plane is bound to get lost in the action shuffle, and frankly, it deserves it.