Plane

I do recall Queen Latifah’s Georgia Byrd warning us of them all the way back in 2006. Yet, once the plane has landed, things take an even worse turn as the passengers and crew are beset upon by terrorists. What begins as a bid for survival amongst the elements becomes a harrowing survival against humanity’s darkest traits.

Butler stars as Brodie Torrance, the pilot of said plane and a former Royal Air Force pilot who now pilots a commercial jetliner for Trailblazer Airlines. Mike Colter stars as Louis Gaspare, a former GCP French Foreign Legion member, who is being extradited to Toronto for a years-old homicide. Torrance is wary about having Gaspare on the flight despite how few passengers there are (a total of fourteen). With no choice but to go forward with the authority’s decision to push Gaspare onto them, Brodie prepares to take flight with his three flight attendants and co-pilot through a storm he tried to warn the airline about. You can only imagine how things go from there.

Throughout the film, which primarily focuses on Brodie Torrance and Louis Gaspare’s attempts to rescue the passengers, the pair go from intense distrust to grudging respect to genuine trust. Plane takes place over the course of a day, at best, but the pair’s opinion of one another changes drastically because of the dangerous situation they find themselves in. Brodie may have been a pilot, both during his career in the military and after his discharge, but he still can fight off those who come for him.

At several points, Gaspare could have left Torrance to his fate, with nobody the wiser, but that is not the kind of person that Gaspare was or ever was. Even he spells out that his actions in the past were the mistakes of a foolish child, and he has strived to be a better person ever since. Despite this, Gaspare also has two goals: survival and escape. His decision to abandon his goal to escape until the last possible moment highlights how he is a good, compassionate person trapped in a difficult situation even before they crashed on that island.

With only fourteen passengers, there aren’t many who make up the supporting cast, yet even out of that number, only a handful have any true importance throughout the film. Brie Taylor (Lily Krug) and Kelly Gale (Katie Dhar) are two friends traveling together, and while initially cavalier about Gaspare’s presence, they heed his warning not to take his picture. Matt Sinclair (Joey Slotnick) and Maxwell Carver (Oliver Trevena) are the two major dissenters amongst the passengers, and it is not in the least surprising that they gravitate towards one another after the crash. Among the named passengers, they are the most hostile towards Gaspare, not to mention Torrance and his crew, who are just as in the dark about their situation as the passengers. These are the four who have the largest presence and the most dialogue.

Additional passengers are a Korean couple, Rosalie Jeong (Jessica Nam) and Joshua Jeong (John Shim), Karim Rahim (Angel Fabián Rivera), Riley Donahue (Quinn McPherson), Chan Yuen (Fernando Chang), a Hispanic couple, Ana Fernández (Rose Eshay) and Javier Molina (Ricky Robles Cruz), and Antonio Ortega (Modesto Lacen) – all in all, twelve have names. Almost all of them act as narrative filigree to up the stakes and provide more hostages for Torrance and Gaspare to risk their lives to save. Sadly, two of them don’t even make it that far.

Isabella Yu (Michelle Lee) and Maria Falco (Amber Rivera) filled out the crew as two of the flight attendants charged with working under Bonnie Lane (Daniella Pineda), the flight purser. Otis Winston plays an RCMP officer charged with escorting Gaspare back to Toronto, and his stupidity leads to the first two casualties of the disaster. In the thick of it, though, Bonnie proves to be a levelheaded person who assists Torrance and Dele, the co-pilot, in keeping the other passengers calm. She only breaks this façade once, when a gun is held directly against her, but regains her composure in the face of imminent death. Dele (Yoson An, who played the love interest in the live-action adaptation of Mulan) is presented as a newbie pilot, and while this might seem suspicious to the avid movie-goer, at no point is Dele an antagonist. He is Torrance’s most ardent supporter, and through his efforts, the plane can fly again.

On the other side are those who make up Trailblazer – most prominently Terry Hampton (Paul Ben-Victor), the airline’s owner. He enlists the aid of Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn) to get them out of this mess. With how films portray these scenarios, one would be forgiven for believing that Scarsdale is solely out to protect the airline’s reputation at the expense of those in peril – and while he does present a plan to try and mitigate the PR damage, at no point does it seem like the rescue mission is not his ultimate goal. He immediately dispatches a private military unit, led by Shellback (Remi Adeleke), into the air towards the last known point of contact, solely to have them in place should they get a definitive location to head out to and rescue the passengers. Considering how these situations usually go in the movies, not to mention real life, it was a nice change of pace.

Finally, we have the bad guys centered around Datu Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor) and his right-hand man Hajan (Claro de los Reyes). They are in charge of the separatist group who have been kidnapping foreign nationals for ransom or simply killing them to drive up the price of those they consider to be valuable targets. Without them, Torrance and his passengers would have been completely fine until the team dispatched by Scarsdale arrived.

Plane is one of a series of films led by Gerard Butler in recent years that are made to capitalize off his name. Much like Dwayne Johnson, Liam Neeson, and Jason Statham in recent years, the quality of each is variable. Still, Plane remains a fun and entertaining action film, with some comedic elements and a host of darker ones that mesh together well.