The villains of the 2022 holiday season were the airlines, so it’s an apt moment for the Gerard Butler action vehicle “Plane” to take flight. The inciting incident involves a cost-cutting safety checker at Trailblazer Airlines insisting that Captain Brodie Torrance (Butler) pilot through a storm instead of around it in order to save fuel during a New Year’s flight from Singapore to Tokyo. Of course, since this is a Gerard Butler action film the passengers on Trailblazer Flight 119 don’t end up stranded for days in an airport but rather fighting for their lives on a remote island in the Philippines ruled by a separatist militia whose primary source of income is hostages.
Not to worry though, because Butler’s Brodie isn’t your average airline pilot, he’s an airline pilot who can kill bad guys with his bare hands. Plus, has backup in the form of Mike Colter, and the two actors make a fine, fun and appealingly masculine pair in “Plane.”
Consider this meet cute: Brodie Torrance is a widowed former Royal Air Force pilot stuck flying long-haul budget flights thanks to a viral video in which he put down an unruly passenger with a chokehold (his signature move, as we’ll come to find out). Louis Gaspare (Colter) is a convicted murderer who has been on the lam for 15 years, now being extradited from Bali to the United States. When Louis ends up on Brodie’s flight, sparks fly (from machine gun fire) as they battle the aforementioned separatist militia to save the passengers and get Brodie back to his daughter Daniela (Haleigh Hekking) in Hawaii.
