Plane - Review Thread

The best thing that the Girard Butler vehicle Plane gave us was that title, or specifically the moment that title showed up at the end of its trailer. There was just something I found absolutely hilarious about that blunt and nondescript title showing up at the end of this advertisement for what otherwise looks like an action movie that takes itself pretty seriously. Learning that they’re working on a sequel called Boat was another bit of comedy. Unsurprisingly the actual movie does not have the camp value that that title might imply and is instead an unexceptional if serviceable working class action movie. The film chronicles a commercial airplane that loses power in midair and has to make an implausible emergency landing in some remote part of the Philippines that’s being controlled by some sort of vague paramilitary organization. Apparently the Philippine government found this premise rather offensive but the movie is so generic that I doubt it’s intended audiences is going to remember much in the way of geographical specifics long after the film ends. The basic setup is at least a little bit original, not wildly so, but enough to separate it a bit from the types of mid-level action programmers its competing against. It does deliver some decent if unexceptional action scenes in the second half that more or less deliver on what you might expect from such a thing. The movie’s mid, but we kind of need mediocre action movies to keep the cinematic ecosystem in sync and this is an okay one.