Plane isn’t stupid enough. The title of this Gerard Butler action thriller, which should only be said with the monosyllabic matter-of-factness of a toddler at an airport, is so boneheaded that it craves chaotic genius in return. But Plane is stifled by just how ordinary it is, and how closely it hews to the standard tropes of action films with longer, more descriptive – yet less ridiculous – titles.
Here, Butler is parachuted into the exact kind of cheap, vaguely racist action flick that dominated the Eighties and Nineties. He plays Brodie Torrance, a commercial pilot heading up a New Year’s Eve flight from Singapore to Tokyo. It’s a budget airline. There are only 14 passengers onboard – plus, of course, a convicted criminal named Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), who’s being transferred between prisons. The plane (just a normal plane, remember) is caught up in a violent storm that Brodie is ordered to fly through. A single lightning strike later, and Brodie is guiding the aircraft back down to Earth for an impromptu landing on what turns out to be a lawless island run by separatists and criminals.
