Plane: Kiwi Yoson An helps keep Gerard Butler’s wild, breathless thriller grounded

Plane (R16,107mins) Directed by Jean-Francois Richet ****

It’s Hogmanay and all former RAF Pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) is looking forward to is homemade haggis, neeps and tatties.

First though, there’s the small matter of getting Trailblazer Airlines Flight 119 from Singapore to Hawaii via Tokyo. But, as he assures his daughter Daniela ( Haleigh Hekking), “there won’t be any delays” in him getting to her in time for the big night.

A pretty much empty plane (14 passengers in total for the first leg) bodes well, even if one of them is a fugitive being extradited to Toronto after 15 years on the run post being accused of an alleged homicide.

And while they’ll be pushing through some serious weather in the South China Sea, his airline’s experts have assured him it should pose no major problems.

“We’ll be taking off just as soon as I learn a few pages of the flight manual,” he jokes over the intercom.

Plane is now available to stream on Prime Video.

However, that jovial mood dissolves almost as soon as they strike turbulence. Struggling to find clear air, the plane is rocked when it’s hit by lightning, taking out all their avionics.

With no power, no radio and seemingly not transmitting, Torrance knows he has just 10 minutes to try and find somewhere safe to land, or they’ll simply drop out of the sky. To make matters worse, the buffeting has already claimed two casualties – one of the cabin crew and the guard charged with looking after prisoner Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter).

With the help of co-pilot Samuel Dele (Kiwi Yoson An), Torrance miraculously finds not only an island, but also a road he can use as a landing strip.

However, after enlisting Gaspare to assist in finding a way of communicating their location and situation to the outside world, he discovers that it may have been safer for him and his charges to stay in the air.

SUPPLIED
if you can overlook the rather sketchy link to real-life politics and one-dimensional baddies, then Plane is offers a sometimes breathless, white-knuckle ride.

Best known for his solid 2005 remake of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and two-part look at the life of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine, director Jean-Francois Richet has put together an impressively taut and thrill-filled actioner.

While we’re well-used to Butler’s brand of bravado from films like the Fallen trilogy and Last Seen Alive, Richet manages to rein in the Scot’s more bombastic tendencies for something more subtle, while pairing him with Evil and The Good Wife’s Colter is a master-stroke. The duo make for an effective team, while never quite truly trusting one another as to their respective motives and actions.

Kudos too to An (Fresh Eggs, Mulan), who makes a decent impression in one of his highest profile Hollywood roles to date.

But strip away all the crowd-pleasing and blood-soaked action and the airline’s increasingly bizarre and blackly hilarious attempts to handle the unfolding PR disaster by any means necessary, and it is easy to see why Filipino politicians objected to the movie.

SUPPLIED

Although filmed in Puerto Rico, the setting is the island of Jolo, portrayed here as a lawless land run by separatists. I don’t disagree that this is yet another example of the American film industry not only entertaining the world, but also taking out another nation’s tourism at the same time. Just this month we’ve seen both Fast X and Book Club: The Next Chapter portray Italy in a less-than-flattering light.

That said, if you can overlook the rather sketchy link to real-life politics and one-dimensional baddies, then Plane offers a sometimes breathless, white-knuckle ride that should particularly appeal to those raised on mid-’90s actioners like Con Air, Air Force One and Sudden Death. Just don’t expect to see it on an in-flight entertainment system near you.