Gerard Butler teams up with Mike Colter in the action thriller “Plane.” Both actors play military veterans thrust into a life-or-death situation, and each character finds out that he has personal strengths and combat skills that neither knew he had.
Butler plays airline pilot and Royal Air Force veteran Brodie Torrance, an everyman who’s not the tactical warrior you usually find as the hero in a movie like this. Colter plays accused murderer and French Foreign Legion fighter Louis Gaspare, a fugitive being transported on Torrance’s flight from Singapore to Tokyo.
An airline executive orders Torrance to fly his plane over, rather than around, a severe weather system, but the storm seems to have no ceiling. After a harrowing moment in the skies, the plane loses its electrical systems, and Torrance is forced to land on a remote island in the Philippines.
Of course, the island is controlled by a separatist militia, and the Filipino government refuses to send a search party to find Torrance and his passengers, so the militia take them hostage. The airline sends in a team of private contractors to aid Torrance and his new partner, Gaspare, in their quest to thwart the militia.
That tactical team is led by real-life former Navy SEALs Remi Adeleke and Pete Scobell. We’ve got a clip from the movie. In this scene, Torrance and Gaspare amp up their counterattack on the militia with the aid of the tactical team.
Speaking of contractors, one of the credited screenwriters is J.P. Davis, the writer behind the outstanding 2022 military thriller “The Contractor,” starring Chris Pine. Davis worked closely with Butler (who’s a producer on “Plane”) and director Jean-François Richet to refine a story from the Scottish crime novelist Charles Cumming. Richet is best known for the French-language gangster movies “Mesrine: Killer Instinct” and “Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1.”
We had a chance to talk with Butler and Colter about the movie. Butler was surprised by my observation that his action pictures (“Angel Has Fallen,” “Greenland,” “Hunter Killer”) usually feature extended scenes where he demonstrates the mechanics of his character’s job.
Both actors talk about how their characters may be veterans, but they’re not really highly trained warriors. They also share stories about working with the real spec ops veterans on “Plane.”
When you think about going to the theater to see an action picture, “Plane” is exactly the kind of movie you’d hope to see. Butler plays a military veteran who’s just trying to get through the day, finish his shift and visit his daughter for the holidays. There’s no sense that he’s the kind of guy who can kick some ass, but he answers the bell and gets the job done.
