Most of my travel experience has been on the ground rather than the air.
According to my mom, I’ve been on an airplane before as a toddler, but I don’t think it counts if I can’t remember the experience.
That said, I’m afraid of heights and had plenty of anxiety about this week’s movie – “Plane.”
I’d best describe the flick as action-packed with lots of tension and pretty decent pacing.
Plus, it’s just under two hours long which makes it less nerve-wracking to sit through.
Plane is a 2023 American action thriller film directed by Jean-François Richet from a screenplay by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis.
The film stars Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, and Tony Goldwyn.
It’s rated R for violence and language and comes in at 107 minutes long.
Commercial pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler) flies Trailblazer Airlines Flight 119 from Singapore to Honolulu via Tokyo.
Torrence reveals to his co-pilot Samuel Dele (An) that he’s a former Royal Air Force pilot that cut his teeth on running the big planes before making it to commercial flights.
After his plane is struck by lightning from a rough storm in the South China Sea, he is forced to land his plane in what turns out to be Jolo Island in the Philippines.
Unfortunately in the process, the crew loses a stewardess and an RCMP officer, who is accompanying fugitive homicide suspect Louis Gaspare (Colter).
Once they lose contact with Torrence’s flight, the board of Trailblazer calls their crisis manager Scarsdale (Goldwyn) to assess their next move and the potential lawsuits they could be facing.
He dispatches a private military outfit to rescue the passengers, as the authorities are unwilling to send troops into the rebel-controlled island.
Torrance goes off into the jungle to seek help, accompanied by Gaspare.
At an abandoned warehouse, he phones Trailblazer and his daughter to tell them the plane’s location, but is attacked by a rebel before subduing him.
They encounter a site used by the rebels to make ransom videos and race back to the plane to help the other passengers.
Unfortunately, they are beaten to it by rebel leader Datu Junmar, who kills a Korean couple who try to escape and takes the surviving passengers and crew hostage, intending to secure large ransoms from their families.
After the group leaves, Torrence and Gaspare overpower the remaining rebels and force them to reveal the location of their base of operations.
Before leaving, Torrence leaves a note for rescue teams telling them what happened and where he was going.
At the rebel hideout, Torrence and Gaspare kill the hostages’ guards and sneak them onto a bus but find their escape route overrun with armed rebels.
That’s when Torrence decides to stay behind to distract the rebels.
As he is about to be executed, the rescue team arrives, inflicting heavy casualties on Junmar’s men.
From there it’s a mad dash back to the plane with the hopes of piloting it to a nearby island with help and an impressive firefight along the way.
Overall, it’s a fairly solid action flick without a lot of frills or plotlines requiring too much from audiences to follow it through to the end.
If you’ve got any airplane fears, I’d suggest waiting to watch this one in the comfort of your own home but otherwise, it’s a solid movie.
