Plane (2023)

Directed by Jean-François Richet. Starring Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Tony Goldwyn, Paul Ben-Victor, Daniella Pineda, Evan Dane Taylor, Joey Slotnick, Claro de los Reyes, Haleigh Hekking. [R]

An RAF vet (Butler) now flying commercial airliners has to commit heroics again after his flight goes down on an island in the South China Sea. Rebels capture the survivors for ransom, so the pilot and one of the passengers—a suspected murderer (Colter) who was under arrest and being transferred by air—have to rescue them. Completely ordinary action-thriller borrows freely from myriad sources (The Flight of the Phoenix, Pitch Black, any number of 80s action programmers where a one-man army tries to free POW’s, etc.) but fails to elevate the pulse or the stakes. Professionally made, but burdened by suspense-free action, for-the-paycheck acting, and a threadbare screenplay. Since he never poses an immediate threat and is given an insufficient back story, what was the point in making Colter’s character a potentially violent criminal? Another one of those B-movies with A-movie frills, as mindless as its humorously generic title (I guess Crash, Survive, and The Rescuers were already taken).

44/100