Plane: Gerard Butler Saves Us from Liam Neeson Once Again

In the white-knuckle action movie PLANE, pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) saves his passengers from a lightning strike by making a risky landing on a war-torn island — only to find that surviving the landing was just the beginning. When most of the passengers are taken hostage by dangerous rebels, the only person Torrance can count on for help is Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an accused murderer who was being transported by the FBI. In order to rescue the passengers, Torrance will need Gaspare’s help, and will learn there’s more to Gaspare than meets the eye.

Review:

Given a choice between a Liam Neeson family in peril thriller and a Gerard Butler adventure, I’ll choose Butler everyday. Neeson’s revenge is personal and atavistic. Butler when he is forced to kill, does it for the greater good- to save the POTUS, people from natural disasters, his Afghani translator, and yes, on occasion, his family. Butler has sympathy for a hurting world, Neeson doesn’t. Butler lives on hope, Neeson on self preservation.

Plane has Butler saving a community of passengers from lightning and Philippine warlords. He selflessly protects them and the airline’s ass, and because of this, he gets special forces backup and a Foreign Legion trained sidekick in Mike Colter. Unlike Samuel L. Jackson, Butler doesn’t need snakes on this plane to deliver an entertaining product.

The plane here only occupies about probably no more than one-third of on screen flight time. It goes up and goes down, (despite catastrophic electrical failure), and lands in one piece. Blow off a fuse and it’s ready to fly again.

Butler gets beaten, disrespected for his rule breaking, respected for his integrity, manages to contact and reassure his worried daughters, and miraculously takes off and lands this plane fifty miles in less than two minutes with no avionics and a bullet in his leg and shoulder. Butler is the action movie version of Jesus. He saves, saves and saves.