Plane (2023)

The cinema (by which I mean the great big building we go to watch a films in with other people) is having something of an exploitation renaissance at the moment, evoking fond memories (in those of us old enough) of the days when not everything filling the multiplexes was big budget Hollywood product. Now we can enjoy the likes of ORPHAN: FIRST KILL (great), COCAINE BEAR (good fun) and WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY (it might be worth giving this one a miss, actually) on the big screen with like-minded people so we can all cheer and clap and (sometimes) boo together, and hooray for that.

At the top quality end of the exploitation scale is PLANE, the kind of film that would have come out on VHS in the 1980s, been directed by Antonio Margheriti (under a pseudonym of course) and starred someone like David Warbeck as the pilot whose plane gets thrown off course and ends up in a pitched battle with drug dealers in an exotic island location.

This time around it's Gerard Butler who, in order to cut costs, is ordered by his bosses to fly his charter plane through a storm rather than around it, leading to the inevitable crash on an island in the Philippines that turns out to be the headquarters for a crime syndicate. Apparently the police refuse to go anywhere near it which is bad news for them and great news for the audience. Soon the passengers are being held to ransom by the bad guys and it's up to Gerard and convicted murderer Louis (Mike Colter) who just happened to be on the flight to save everyone. 

You don't have to be an 80s exploitation fan to love PLANE but if you are you'll appreciate touches like the 'Meanwhile in New York' bit which could be straight out of an Enzo G Castellari or Umberto Lenzi movie of the period. Gerard Butler has been in some right old rubbish but he's very good in this and provides the kind of strong presence the film needs to keep your willing disbelief suspended as high as the altitude the titular aeroplane reaches at the beginning. The director responsible is Jean-Francois Richet and I hope he becomes a name to remember. As it stands PLANE is a thunderingly good, edge-of-the-seat style action picture put together by people who know how to get their audience clapping and cheering by the end. Great stuff. Lionsgate's Blu-ray comes with over 40 minutes of extra stuff, with three making-of featurettes with interviews with cast and crew. This Is Your Captain is 15 minutes about Gerard Butler, PLane Clothes is 7 minutes about (unsurprisingly) the costumes, and Brace For Turbulence is 20 minutes about the stunts and special effects. No commentary track but you do get a trailer, which you can see here anyway, with Gerard looking suitably angry:

PLANE is getting a digital release from Lionsgate on Monday 13th March 2023. It comes out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 24th April 2023