Starring Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Evan Dane Taylor

Directed by Jean-François Richet

Lionsgate, in cinemas now

Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) is the Captain of Trailblazer 119 out of Singapore on New Year’s Eve. He’s got four crew, fourteen passengers and an escaped prisoner in handcuffs aboard. All of whom find their lives in his hands when an electrical storm knocks the plane out of the sky and onto Jolo Island in the Philippines. Brodie goes for help, taking Louis Gaspare (Mike Coulter) with him. Gaspare is a murderer and he and Torrance have to learn to work together if they’re going to survive and get the passenger off the island before local rebels take and execute them.

Look, this is a Gerard Butler action movie so you know what you’re getting. What’s interesting, and fun, about it is that what you’re getting has definitively evolved over the last few iterations and it’s pretty interesting these days. Butler’s Torrance is a nicely crumpled, down-at-heel former RAF cargo pilot and widower whose grief is less ‘MY DEAD WIIIIIFE!’ on his knees in the rain and more just something he knows he’s never going to get to put down. There’s a streak of decency in Butler’s recent roles (the excellent Den of Thieves notwithstanding where he’s both great and playing a monster) and this is no exception. Brodie Torrance is a role James Stewart could play: decent, hard-travelling, no manner of luck at all. This is Butler’s career path and he’s really good at it. It’s also really welcome to see, especially in formation with David Harbour’s recent work. Hard travelling Harrison Fordian heroes are on the rise again and not before time.

Somewhat inevitably the rest of the cast fare a little les swell. Mike Colter’s Gaspare is great but is weirdly the most novelistic character in the movie. The movie is written by spy novelist Charles Cumming along with JP Davis and Louis feels very much like one of the pared down, violence engines Cumming is good at. Don’t get me wrong, Coulter’s very good here but Gaspare feels like he’s not done when the movie is. Not a criticism but a note that hits a little oddly. The rest of the cast are also under-served but for worse reasons. Yoson An’s dutiful co-pilot’s job is to look worried and be vital. The passengers are largely caricatures. The rebels are absolutely caricatures and Evan Dane Taylor’s Datu Junmar wouldn’t look out of place in a 1980s action movie, which is not a good thing or Dane Taylor’s fault. Only Remi Adeleke’s Shellback, the unflappable leader of the Private Military team sent to retrieve the passengers registers and this honestly feels like a star-making turn for him just as Tomb Raider 2 once was for Butler.

If you’re thinking that a movie where the rebels are all evil and a PMC helps save the day is simplistic, you’d be right. Tony Goldwyn as the corporate fixer that arranges them is played absolutely as a fast-talking, bespoke suited hero and it’s such a weird beat in a movie whose blue collar is soaked in sweat like this. It’s also a little disappointing from Cummings, whose work, like compatriot Mick Herron, is so comfortable in the grey areas. There was the opportunity for a pseudo cyberpunk exploration of the difficult morals of the corporate age here and it’s not the movie they wanted to make. It would have been nice to see though.

That aside, this is a lot of fun and one with a pair of unusually likable heroes and some brutally pragmatic action (there is a sledgehammer beat, four in fact, that will make you wince). Director Richet keeps things relatively low-key until the final twenty minutes and then hits the gas pedal at the same time as Captain Torrance. The fight is equal parts ridiculous and nicely realized and gives the ending a smart sense of massive danger and personal stakes. Likewise the final moments where Butler adds Brodie Torrance to his growing list of beefcakes with hearts of marshmallow. Hard to kill, but easy to hurt.

Verdict: Plane is absolutely the action movie you think it is but it’s leads some pleasing emotional complexity. Also a dude gets punched in the face with a plane, so everyone wins. Except him. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart