I was pleasantly surprised by Plane. Going into it, I had pretty low expectations as it seemed to be a cheap, action flick that was built for the dad's in our life. But there were some pretty good performances, set pieces, and brutal action that raised this movie from mediocrity.

The plot is incredibly bare bones: a plane gets damaged in a storm and crash lands on a desolate island. We've seen this used in countless films and TV shows throughout the years but, the way this is handled is pretty incredible. We see it from the pilots perspective as he and the stewards are trying to navigate the situation to create the best course of action to survive. It was done in a very believable way, giving us a glimpse at crash landing procedure and how truly indestructible planes are. The entire 30-minutes sequence had me on the edge of my seat even though I knew it was coming from a mile away. The CGI in this section was quite rough though as the plane looked like something rendered in an Xbox 360 game.

The movie does fall into some pretty classic tropes in movies like this. One being that almost all the "good" people are the classic white American men and woman, but the "bad" people (the island combatants and our main prisoner hero) are individuals of color. It is subtle, but something I noticed that slightly rubbed me the wrong way. Also the depiction of how the Philippines refused to assist in their own territory was laughable. But it opened the way for the good men of the American military were there to save the day and kill some island terrorists. It has some minor military propaganda that didn't totally take away from my experience, but worth a mention.

The performances were all pretty good. Gerard Butler played his usual role, I enjoyed his charisma as a pilot but also the gruff and militaristic persona he pulled out from his previous service. Mike Colter was great as the ultimate badass of the movie, killing terrorists with whatever he could get his hands on. This was nothing against his performance, but I hated how they wrote his characters ending in the film. It did not do his character arch any justice and felt out of place. The rest of the cast was decent.

Overall, this movie delivers exactly what it promised in a short concise runtime and I cannot ask any more than that.

Score: 63%
Verdict: Decent