You can imagine the committee meetings devoted to finding just the right title for primo action star Gerard Butler’s latest, in which he plays an airline pilot encountering lightning strikes that force him to crash-land on a rebel-infested remote island in the Philippines. As it criss-crosses the airline disaster genre and frightening jungle thriller, why not just tell the public what it really is. While it could be called Terror Island, or maybe Pirates Jungle, or Flight to the Death, the producers came up with the inspired plain Plane. That works well enough for anyone expecting Airport meets The High and the Mighty, but really it is just the first half that fits snugly into that category, nail-biting as it is.

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Most of the action comes when the plane somehow survives a fierce lightning storm (nice FX here) by crash-landing in the largely uninhabited Jolo Island Cluster in the Philippines (Puerto Rico stands in for the actual location), and wouldn’t you know it — no damn cell reception. Fortunately, the pilot is Brodie Torrance (Butler), an experienced professional who has command of the situation from the cockpit to encounters with rebel pirates up to no good on the otherwise deserted island. With Butler at the helm, we know we are in fine hands.

It all starts out normally, a New Year’s Eve flight that is the most sparsely populated in the history of commercial airline disaster movies (my guess is they were trying to save on hiring extras), thus we only have the usual stereotypical passengers from a businessman creep (Joey Slotnick) to pretend toughie (Oliver Trevena) to giggling social influencers glued to their phones (Kelly Gale, Lilly Krug). The fierce weather and lightning strikes mean this plane should have been grounded, but in a timely plot point the airline was trying to cut corners and ordered it into the air. Torrance and co-pilot Samuel Dele (Yoson An) deftly manage to somehow crash land it on the island, although two souls were lost due to the horrendous turbulence including an FBI agent accompanying a handcuffed murderer , Louis Gaspare (a sturdy and imposing Mike Colter) being extradited. He becomes one of the casualties, and so without authority we are expecting this prisoner to do some bad stuff.

Once on the island though Gaspare turns out to be a key ally for Torrance as he coincidentally was a member of the French Foreign Legion and is well-versed in fighting off bad dudes, something that comes in handy as the pair team up to save the other passengers who are soon taken hostage by the pirates who are led by evil incarnate guy Datu Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), a one dimensional baddie up to no good with his one dimensional associates. Meanwhile cut to civilization and we see corporate troubleshooter and ex-special ops agent Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn) back at headquarters barking orders and jumping into action by setting up a group of Mercenaries to send in and find the downed plane which has disappeared off their radar. Enter actual ex-Navy Seals turned actors (Pete Scobvell, Remi Adeleke) to take on the assignment. What follows is non-stop action led by Torrance and Gaspare, and well, you can imagine where it all goes.

It is mostly predictable, and that is just the way we want it. I think Butler has turned into the most interesting action star out there following his Fallen trilogy and movies like Greenland. With Liam Neeson aging, and Bruce Willis retiring, Butler is our guy and his instinct for just the right kind of material for this sort of thing is top notch. Colter plays it perfectly too, while the rest of the cast isn’t given much depth, but do fine, and that includes Daniella Pineda as Bonnie, the lead flight attendant. However this is Butler’s show from start to finish, and as usual he has been given an emotional hook, just trying to get back home to his daughter (Haleigh Hekking). It all works within its own ambitions, expertly helmed by Jean-Francois Richet working from a script by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis. Producers are Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Valradian, Marc Butan, Alan Siegel, and Butler.

Lionsgate releases it exclusively in theaters (likely not on airlines, thank God) on Friday.

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