Plane

The day has final­ly come: Hol­ly­wood has allowed Ger­ard But­ler to play a Scots­man again. He’s so gid­dy about it, in fact, that with­in the first 10 min­utes of Plane – Jean-François Richet’s lat­est action­er – his flight cap­tain Brodie Tor­rance man­ages to sneak in the words ​“neeps, hag­gis and tat­ties” in a con­ver­sa­tion, fol­lowed short­ly by a cheer­ful but firm slan­der of the English.

Things are all jol­ly until Cap­tain Torrance’s tit­u­lar plane gets trapped in a storm, with vio­lent tur­bu­lence quick­ly evolv­ing into a full-blown dis­as­ter. This being Ger­ard But­ler, of course, oblit­er­a­tion is avert­ed with sec­onds to spare, quick­ly fol­lowed by an even more haunt­ing sce­nario: pas­sen­gers and crew realise they are strand­ed on a war-torn island in the Philip­pines, with all com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems burned down in the storm.

A tight­ly-paced action thriller, Plane com­pe­tent­ly deliv­ers on the deli­cious­ly for­mu­la­ic tropes of the genre. Yes, hunky Cap­tain Brodie Tor­rence is a wid­owed sin­gle father try­ing to redeem him­self with his teenage daugh­ter. Yes, one of the few pas­sen­gers on the plane is a dan­ger­ous inmate about to be let loose in the jun­gle. Yes, the rad­i­cal mili­tia in the Philip­pine island record the cru­el mur­ders of West­ern­ers in a shab­by cam­corder. It is pre­cise­ly this pre­dictabil­i­ty that high­lights the fresh­ness of the writ­ing, as wit­ty quips inter­twine with adren­a­line-infused one-lin­ers in a film that knows how to swift­ly dodge dullness.

Bal­anc­ing Butler’s pea­cock­ing cen­tral per­for­mance is a per­fect­ly restrained Mike Colter, who clev­er­ly unrav­els the mys­te­ri­ous past of pris­on­er Louis Gas­pare, teas­ing an audi­ence that has been apt­ly primed for the twists. The brew­ing bro­mance between the two men takes cen­tre stage here, and Plane is much more con­cerned with the see­saw­ing shifts with­in their pow­er dynam­ics than intro­duc­ing a one-dimen­sion­al love inter­est that would do noth­ing but dilute pre­cious tension.

Tony Gold­wyn taps onto his Scan­dal fame as a male Olivia Pope of sorts, cat­ti­ly cut­ting off deep-pock­et­ed exec­u­tives who scram­ble to pre­tend to care more about sav­ing lives than avoid­ing a law­suit. The non­de­script con­trol room from where he oper­ates offers a nifty con­nec­tion to the world out­side the island while remain­ing unin­tru­sive – a tough bal­ance to achieve. The final leg of the nar­ra­tive tri­ad lies with Torrance’s teenage daugh­ter, brought in for the emo­tion­al gut punch need­ed for the audi­ence to feel for the lov­able protagonist.

Sure, Plane is far from ground­break­ing, but with its effi­cient nod to the clas­sics of the genre, Richet’s action thriller carves a com­pelling — and ever-enter­tain­ing — effort, the blood-pump­ing storm sequence one of the best-realised tur­bu­lences in recent mem­o­ry. This tech­ni­cal exper­tise com­bined with Butler’s effort­less (and often over­looked) charm firm­ly solid­i­fies this sure-to-be crowd-pleas­ing block­buster, and, if the rumoured sequel ever comes, it will cer­tain­ly be welcome.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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