One of the many reasons schlock horror M3gan become such a surprise critical darling last week was down to Universal’s crafty release strategy, sashaying into the otherwise dead zone of January, easily leaping over an extremely low bar. This week reminds us of what the month usually offers US cinema-goers – an unwanted comedy remake, a horror film for Christians and a Gerard Butler action thriller – junk that’s easy for the studios to dump and even easier for audiences to forget.
Already the subject of social media jabs because of its ridiculous title, the Butler of it all, a film about a plane called Plane, is a January movie through and through, filling empty screens just because they need filling, doing the least but at an aggressively loud volume. There have certainly been worse B-movies released in this most cursed of months (last year’s kidnapped mermaid saga The King’s Daughter and 2020’s staggeringly, almost satirically, incompetent Blake Lively thriller The Rhythm Section spring to mind) but there have also recently been far better (slay M3gan slay etc) and as such, Plane doesn’t exactly rise above that low bar but sort of meets it head-on.
For a film called Plane, there’s really not as much plane as one would hope here, disappointing given how ideal that setting can be for a B-thriller that might be in need of a lift, exemplified by Rachel MacAdams in Red Eye, Jodie Foster in Flight Plan, Liam Neeson in Non-Stop and, hopefully, Taron Egerton in the upcoming Carry On. Everything you need to know about Plane can more easily be summed up by Butler’s absurd character name – Brodie Torrance, something one would expect to find in a half-price airport potboiler. He’s a salt-of-the-earth Scottish pilot, whose character can best be described as pilot, tasked with flying a tiny number of passengers on a new year’s flight from Singapore to Tokyo (anyone who has been on a plane in the last two years will find the large number of empty seats to be the most far-fetched thing about the film).
But there’s a lightning storm which forces Butler to make an emergency landing on a remote island in the Philippines. While he manages it with the grace of an unshaven Sully, he’s then tasked with keeping his passengers safe from a killer (Mike Colter) who was being transported onboard which would be bad enough until he finds out that the island is run by a violent group of rebels who have a history of kidnapping – and killing – foreigners.
A more accurate title would then be Island, but Plane is perhaps best at least for instructing audience on the best location to watch the film, half-awake, tipsy on wine served from a litre bottle. It’s usually the kind of dross that would arrive straight to one’s rental service of choice (like Butler’s last film, Last Seen Alive) and it’s only when one digs a little deeper, that we see the budget is a pretty considerable $50m, impressive enough whenever the release in this climate but at this time of year, that makes it the equivalent of a Marvel movie (in comparison, M3gan cost just $12m). It therefore needed to launch in your local multiplex to turn a profit although, it’s often a head-scratcher trying to figure out just where that money went. The cast, outside of Butler, Colter and a few scenes of a sleep-walking Tony Goldwyn, are mostly bit-players, the action scenes are mainly just lots of shooting and the plane scenes are often strangely shaky, as if someone is dangling a model plane on a piece of string.
It’s just about diverting enough for the most part but there’s something a little off about its pacing, French director Jean-François Richet (who peaked a while back with his propulsive Mesrine movies) struggling to corral his moving parts, suspense never really arriving as it should. Instead, we get bullets, a boring amount of them in fact, with a finale based around who can shoot the most before that plane comes back into play. There are small mercies throughout: Butler is thankfully not attempting an American or, shudder, Irish accent (even if to prove he’s Scottish he says haggis in the first 15 minutes), his character is also not a readymade action hero (there’s one easy-to-empathise with moment when he takes a good 30 seconds to regain his breath after a fight) and Colter has real movie star presence on show here in bursts (even if it still feels waiting to be utilised properly).
It’s hard to hope for that much more in January and the silliness of Plane will probably do the job for those burned out by the stone-faced seriousness of awards season fodder but for a film all about unpretentious fun, I wish there had been a bit more of it.
Plane is out now in US cinemas and in the UK on 27 January
