PLANE***

PLANE ain't nothing but a good, stupid time.  It's just an honest silly action film, and feels no shame in that.  Gerard Butler stars as Brodie Torrance which should tell you everything you need to know about the film. He's ex-RAF, a widower, proudly Scottish, and now flies commercial jets. He just needs to get the final bunch of passengers to Tokyo and get home to his teenage daughter, COMMANDO style.  But bad weather forces an emergency landing on an island that happens to be run by TROPIC THUNDER style armed-to-the-nuts ransoming rebels.  The good news is that Brodie, while ageing and out of breath, still has moves, and he's also transporting a French Foreign legion soldier wanted for murder - Mike Colter aka Luke Cage aka the predictable action hero with a heart.  So the two of them set about keeping the passengers safe until Tony Goldwyn's airline exec's private rescue mercenaries show up.

The action set pieces are great fun as is Butler's brand of low-key smarmy humour. I like that they acknowledge he's human.  He gets puffed out after fighting off a rebel in a telephone exchange.  When he's succeeded in landing the plane at the end he takes a moment just to let the adrenaline run down and to have a bit of a manly cry.  I also love  how they film the plane. There's a really great shot at the end where they frame it from the perspective of the top of the fin, perfectly symmetrical. And I'm not going to lie. Under direction from Jean Froicois Richet (MESRINE), I was seriously stressed out in the final set-piece, totally involved in whether the plane would make it.  So mock it all you like, this film may be hokey, but it works!

PLANE has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.