Plane Review – FilmTotaal Review
Director: Jean Francois Richet | Screenplay: Charles Cumming, JP Davis | Cast: Gerard Butler (Brody Torrance), Mike Colter (Louis Gaspare), Daniella Pineda (Bonnie), Evan Dane Taylor (Junmar), Paul Ben-Victor (Hampton), Haleigh Hekking (Daniela Torrance), ea | Time to play: 107 minutes | Year: 2023
Film sets end up in film studios through an intermediary, an agent. If it is to your liking, then a long process begins that does not always reach the goal. Sometimes an actor manages to make a movie. He or she loves the script, commits to the production, and creates a final product that is all about him or her. Airplane It’s the Gerard Butler show. Even that uninspired and inappropriate title is due to him.
During a New Years night flight, a plane is hit and threatens to crash. Fortunately, Brodie Torrance is the pilot. This seasoned hero manages to land the plane on a Philippine island. But that doesn’t save the small group of passengers and crew: their emergency landing drew the attention of violent separatists. Torrance’s job is to keep everyone safe and get help.
Knowledge is power. But sometimes also an open door to frustration. In the first twenty minutes of Airplane a long list of things that happen that would never have happened on board a real airliner. When there’s a bad storm, people don’t say ‘fly over it’, a pilot of a big plane doesn’t stand at the gate to greet each passenger, or leave the cockpit to let the co-pilot into the cockpit at the airport to ask travelers if they are okay after the annoying turbulence.
But hey, it kind of sets the tone of the movie. You are in a simple action movie that flouts the rules to give you some entertainment. Those first twenty minutes are for the sole purpose of showing you that Brodie Torrance is extremely concerned about the well-being of his passengers, that he is a brilliant pilot, and that he has a reason to survive this. Do you really need almost half an hour for that? No, that could have been shorter because there is still a lot to do after the emergency landing.
Avoiding reality is still there too, but by then you must have let it go. What would have been necessary was to create sympathy for the passengers. Which are cardboard to the la, but also uninteresting and more opposed than cooperative. Airplane he doesn’t care too much about reality, so he needs more than the fact that these are people in need that Torrance chooses to risk his life for.
It wouldn’t be an official B-movie if it weren’t for the handcuffed killer who was just escorted to prison. And, of course, he’s the one who chooses pilot Torrance as his assistant in the Philippine desert. No good reason given, the makers assume that you as an action movie connoisseur simply know that this man is the better choice.
A less good option is the background music: partly created by well-known film composer Marco Beltrami, who you’d expect to find the right tone, but often sounds so ominous that you expect something supernatural to come around any corner. moment. In one scene a kind of percussion click has been chosen that gives the impression that something is wrong with the soundtrack.
The strangest choice is the title of the film. Most of the film takes place outside the plane and involves stranded passengers in danger of being hijacked. The movie studio wanted a different name for this creature, but lead actor and co-producer Gerard Butler demanded it be Airplane he stayed and got away with it.
It’s notable that Butler was in charge of this production, because as a character pilot, Torrance is a pure, very boring hero. A big heart, he excels at everything he does and always makes the right decisions. Except he’s surprised there are separatists even though his co-pilot told him so ten minutes before.
Put all logic aside, go into the movie knowing that you don’t have to worry about all those things that don’t match reality. Then it is Airplane an average entertaining action movie. Once on the ground there’s a good rhythm, the danger is certainly clear, and an almost perfect climax is achieved. Unfortunately, they add one last step that isn’t exciting because you’ve seen a scene like this before. And because you know that the great driver Torrance can do everything anyway.