Review: Gerard Butler turns ‘Plain’ into a decent popcorn thriller

Portland, Maine — [Editorial note: This article is a critical analysis of a film and doesn’t represent the views of NEWS CENTER Maine, but the author.]

Action movies coming out in January usually don’t have much to offer audiences.

The month is usually considered a movie wasteland, but this latest installment of “Airplanes” might be worth checking out for fans of the popcorn flick.

Movie titles don’t leave much to the imagination. And what you see is pretty much what you get.”Airplane” is the story of a passenger plane flying from Singapore to Tokyo being struck by lightning.

Gerard Butler stars as Captain Brody Torrance, who is responsible for safely landing a flown plane. He and his co-pilot Hajan (Claro de los Reyes) successfully lift the plane off the plane after a tense and entertaining sequence of tackling navigational challenges and determining how much time is left before the plane hits the ground. We were able to land.

They land the plane on a mining road in the Philippine island jungle.

Most of the passengers and crew survive, but the flight attendant and the law enforcement officer who handed over the murder suspect are dead in the turbulence.

Hajan tells the captain that the island they landed on is controlled by separatists and militias, so they shouldn’t expect a search and rescue team.

With the plane’s electronics malfunctioning, Torrance is stranded without even a transponder for airline officials to track. Left with few options for this, Torrance releases a murder suspect, an ex-French Foreign Legion soldier named Gaspare (Mike Colter), and travels with him to seek help.

While they are gone, the remaining passengers and crew of the plane are taken hostage by a militia commander named Dere (Yoseong Ang). Torrance successfully communicated with his daughter, but the phone was soon destroyed, leaving him with no idea how much information had come through.

When he and Gaspard return to the plane, they discover the captured hostages, rescue them all, and face the tough task of getting them off the island.

“Airplane” doesn’t look like much in the trailer, but the movie makes for a decent popcorn thriller. Butler isn’t playing a well-trained Special Forces unit. He is a Scottish pilot who served for some time in the Royal Air Force. As such, his character is a little more grounded than his past roles, such as those in the “Olympus Has Fallen” trilogy.

He takes quite a few hits and gets shot several times. At heart, Torrance seems like a good guy just trying to get his passengers home safely.

Though their roles are small, Reyes and Daniella Pineda (who plays a member of the flight attendant named Bonnie) end up stealing the show. It’s Reyes and Pineda that viewers will remember when the credits roll.

“Airplane” brings to mind 1990s action thrillers such as “Air Force One” and “Speed”. They’re not going to win the prize. Their only job is to keep the audience entertained while eating popcorn and drinking soda without getting bored. If an action flick can have a coherent story and half-baked cinematography, that’s a bonus.

The action sequences in “Plane” certainly get the job done. There are plenty of gunfights, knife fights, and particularly tense hand-to-hand combat between Torrence and his attackers, filmed surprisingly well up close.

Still, perhaps the best part of the film is probably the opening sequence in which Torrance has to drop the plane safely to the ground without a power source. It takes a few minutes to show you what the process looks like.

Between that and some dad jokes, Butler delivers a decent action-thriller movie.

‘House Party’ is another movie that hits theaters this week. This comedy film starring Jacob Lattimore and Tosin Cole is a reboot of the 1990 film of the same name.

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