A YouTube film reviewer who I normally trust described 2023's 'Plane' as a nineties-style action film in the modern era and generally sung its praise. So, seeing as movies of that genre are a real nostalgic favourite of mine, I figured I'd give this one a go.
I can see where the reviewer was coming from. It's a pretty simply plot - passenger plane pilot (Gerard Butler) crashes his jumbo jet on a remote island, whose only real population seems to be terrorists. Naturally, the passengers are taken hostage and it's up to Butler and another passenger (Mike Colter) to get them out alive.
Yeah, it's fun. But - and maybe this is just my biased, nostalgic view - those action films of the nineties (i.e. 'The Rock' and 'Speed' etc) seemed to get going right from the beginning and never take their foot off the brake until the credits rolled. With 'Plane' you can pretty much scroll through your favourite social media site on your phone while the first half of the story plays out. Really not much happens. Of course the action really gets going in the second half, but you can effectively skip everything until the passengers are actually taken hostage.
The villains are pretty much cookie-cutter stereotypes - simply 'evil dudes' being evil. One even started to make me laugh because every time he was on screen he scowled to such a degree he might as been wearing an 'angry mask.' The other - minor - gripe was during the end. As I elude to in this review's title, the plane is kind of 'bulletproof.' I don't know anything about planes or how they work, but I'm pretty sure you can't really fly with an entire army's bullets slugged into your windshield, but - hey - never mind.
There's nothing majorly new about 'Plane,' but if you can find it for cheap (or on streaming service) and you generally like all-out action then it's definitely worth a go - especially for the gunfight at the very end and an awesome 'sniper-style' rifle that generally makes mincemeat of the bad-guys.
7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that
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