107 min | R | January 13, 2023 | Lionsgate
A commercial pilot crash-lands a damaged jet on a remote island controlled by armed separatists. The only man who can help him is a murder suspect he was transporting in handcuffs. Sometimes you take the gun you can get.
Brodie Torrance flies a budget airliner through a storm he was told to avoid. Lightning takes out the electronics and forces him to land on Jolo, an island in the Philippines run by militias who kidnap for ransom. The premise is the title and nothing more. Plane is a survival thriller stripped of subplot and theme, built to deliver one competent man solving one concrete problem after another. It knows exactly what it is and refuses to pretend otherwise.
Gerard Butler plays Torrance as a working pilot rather than an action hero. He checks fuel, calculates glide distance, and talks to air traffic control in the flat cadence of a man doing his job. Butler keeps the panic underneath the procedure, which makes the landing sequence tense instead of cartoonish. Mike Colter plays Louis Gaspare, a fugitive extradited for homicide, with a stillness that reads as competence before it reads as threat. The two men form an alliance built on usefulness, and Colter never lets Gaspare become a sidekick. Tony Goldwyn plays Scarsdale, the crisis manager running the rescue from a corporate office, with the cold efficiency of a man treating lives as logistics.
Jean-François Richet directs the action in long, legible takes that let you track who is where. The mid-film firefight in the village unfolds in extended handheld shots with the camera staying at ground level beside Butler. Richet shoots the violence without quick cuts, so every hit lands with weight. The script by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis wastes no time on backstory and keeps the geography of the island clear at every step. The production design renders the downed aircraft as a fragile shelter, a metal box surrounded by jungle that offers no protection.
Plane succeeds because it commits to its own smallness. There is no conspiracy, no twist, and no larger meaning. There is a pilot, a prisoner, a broken plane, and a deadline. Richet and Butler treat that simple setup with total seriousness and deliver a thriller that does precisely what it promises and stops the moment it is done.