Friday, January 13, 2023

Movie Review: Plane

Around mid-October 2014, the idea for starting this movie review blog began - in the hope of a new business idea - something far different than the normal working life of most of the world. All things being equal, working for others will always be considered a "second place finish", and working for yourself and in charge of your own income and destiny - the ultimate dream for all of us.

This review of the new movie "Plane" is the 1000th blog post within this movie website, that has reviewed past and current movies, award season winners and losers, several tributes (the most recent being for the late Olivia Newton-John) on August 8, 2022, and at times some political and current events commentary. Some two years ago I am very proud that this website was added to the top 100 movie review websites on the internet with Feedspot. This has created 8 new opportunities where I have been asked by both producers and directors to review Independent low-budget movies. These review requests have been a direct result of my high ranking on Feedspot and the popularity of this website, that now is much more about writing than a blogging business.

This ongoing hobby of movie-going and reviewing is a big part of what I do now and I don’t see it ever ending. However, what has been discouraging in 2022 to see the positive reviews and even awards for the two horrible movies of 2022, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and “Babylon”. I can only hope this has not introduced a new trend in the movie industry, where garbage and weirdness is considered good - only because its different. Every aspiring screenwriter studies movies to gain ideas and perspective on the extremely challenging art of screenwriting. I view these two worst-ever films as a huge step backward for all of us, on the outside looking in.

As far as the new movie "Plane", starring Gerard Butler, this is a new example of a trend of "Gerard Butler action films" that now can probably be considered a new buzzword in the movie industry. The good part of Plane is the fact that the screenwriter has taken overdone ideas involving a large Jet, passengers, and a prisoner being transported and crashing on a deserted Island and was able to introduce enough new and good ideas to make this movie worth recommending. The transported prisoner Louis Gaspare is played by Mike Colter, who has starred in the Luke Cage TV series and is an action star in his own right. Over time, the pilot of the plane Brodie Torrence, played by Butler, and Louis form a kind of nervous friendship as they try to rescue the passengers after they are kidnapped by local Island terrorists. I thought the action scenes were both strong and believable with a conclusion showing good imagination. The back story is also well done as the airline and FBI work to both find the plane and rescue the passengers. Leading this effort is someone named Scarsdale, played by Tony Goldwin.

This film is far from the best Gerard Butler action movie - that honor goes to "Olympus as Fallen", released in 2013. Still, it is 2 hours of solid entertainment and my rating is 80%, higher than the once again wrong Rotten Tomatoes rating of 71%.

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