plane movie review 2023

"Plane" is the case of an action movie in which the dumb title—the most memorable thing about it—isn't an artistic statement, it's an alibi. If it can convince you that it's so simple, suddenly all of its laziness with character development, plotting, action sequences, etc., seems quaint, if not knowing. Add the pitch of Gerard Butler on a self-rescue mission, saving his flight passengers and crew from angry Filipino militants after a crash landing, and the expectations lower themselves.

This rickety vehicle is produced by Butler, who seems to make these movies to avoid wearing superhero spandex or having to hurl himself off a cliff like Tom Cruise . He's fared better as a last action hero of a certain type of movie, and the biggest problem with "Plane" throughout is that it isn't wilder; it does not revel appropriately enough in its open dumbness. For its junky concept that eventually embraces '80s action storytelling firmer than a handshake in " Predator ," there are so many missed moments in which director Jean-François Richet attempts to get a free genre pass isn't so much as coasting but rushing to get itself over with.

Things are looking up for "Plane" when it's gearing up for a big crash. Our main hero—Plane—is struck by lightning in a large spat of brutal weather, knocking out its power and dooming it to an unforeseen landing. With more of an air of "I can't believe this bad service," the 14 passengers on board start to freak out progressively; things become even direr when someone thinks they can outwit seatbelts. The sequence is cut with a punchy, glad-you-aren't-there intensity, and a couple of illustrative stunts—nasty things involving heads and neck trauma—make a firm point not to test gravity. Butler's pilot Brodie Torrance, who kicked off the flight with some Southwest Airlines-grade jokes over the intercom, executes some macho maneuvering and has his co-pilot Samuel ( Yoson An ) clock the ten minutes they have before they eventually crash land on a remote island in the Philippines.

During this tumultuous descent, it's mighty strange when "Plane" shows a closeup of a drafted text message but not long enough for us to read whatever it says. But that's more of a hint that no characters have any important point to this story, aside, maybe, from a captured fugitive named Louis Gaspare ( Mike Colter ), who is handcuffed to an officer at the back of the plane. His history of committing homicide comes later in handy when the flight lands in progressively hostile territory. Brodie, with his history in the RAF and a gun secretly in his pants, brings him along the mysterious terrain to find help. Butler and Colter proceed to fend off plainly bad guys, with little chemistry between them in the process.

Everything shifts for them when, after making a communications breakthrough at a shady warehouse (bullets on the floor, not a great sign), a bad guy sneaks up from behind and tries to kill Brodie. The scuffle that ensues is impressive, with the camera mostly holding on Butler's face as he wrestles with this bigger dude in tight quarters. But nothing is as exciting or long-lasting from here on out, even when Richet tries to heighten the danger with merciless militia men who roll up and kidnap Brodie's passengers and crew. "Plane" rushes through its emotional and explosive beats so that it can get to the next crisis without having to fill out the previous one, and it wildly skims on the good stuff in the process. Hostage situations are quickly fixed, dull gunfire exchanges are executed as if they were shot on different days, and even Colter's stiff, quiet killer only has his silence to make his stiffness remotely interesting as he doesn't get much of an arc despite the ominous promise at the beginning. It's just a bunch of action filmmaking gruel, presenting the jungle terrain with a color tint that matches the dank sweat on Butler's t-shirt.

The biggest scene-stealer, really, is Gun, a quite large rifle brought by some airline-hired American black ops dudes who later appear, and which can fire bullets that rocket through car doors and exploding rib cages. Gun has a sounder dramatic arc than any other heroes in this assortment of action figurines and scowling cardboard cutouts and at least provides gory over-the-top violence like "Rambo" (2008), given the film's sleazy evolution. (My preview audience audibly adored Gun more than everything and everyone else in "Plane.") Everyone else on-screen, from Butler's simply exhausted pilot to Colter's fugitive-maybe-looking for redemption to the super-scowling Filipino militia leader named Junmar ( Evan Dane Taylor ), is treated with such little sincerity by the script that you almost start to feel bad for them.

Meanwhile, at Trailblazer Air headquarters back in New York City, the film props up its message that airline companies, not just their pilots, are ready to go to war for you. A group of people sits around a U-shape table with ominous lighting. The airline's CEO, Hampton ( Paul Ben-Victor ), uses his list of contacts trying to locate and then protect the passengers, including those American guys who come with their own equipment. A no-BS PR hotshot named Scarsdale, played by Tony Goldwyn , has all the answers and plenty of 'tude, too, like when he barks, "If you have New Year's Eve Plans, I just canceled them." It's telling how these scenes are filmed with the same feeling of a board room in one of Butler's " Olympus Has Fallen " movies. Like the other bits of wonky heroism in the disappointing vacation that is "Plane," it makes for an exaggerated joke with no punchline.

Now playing in theaters .

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Gerard Butler as Brodie Torrance
Mike Colter as Louis Gaspare
Yoson An as Dele
Tony Goldwyn as Scarsdale
Daniella Pineda as Bonnie
Paul Ben-Victor as Hampton
Remi Adeleke as Shellback
Joey Slotnick as Sinclair
Evan Dane Taylor as Junmar
Claro de los Reyes as Hajan
Haleigh Hekking as Daniela Torrance

Cinematographer

Brendan Galvin

Writer (story by)

Charles Cumming
David Rosenbloom
Jean-François Richet
Marco Beltrami
Marcus Trumpp

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‘Plane’ Review: A High-Flying Action Movie as Sturdy as Its Star, Gerard Butler

He plays a pilot forced to make an emergency landing, at which point the trouble really starts.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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PLANE, from left: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, 2023. ph: Kenneth Rexach / Lionsgate / courtesy Everett Collection

Ever since the ’80s, action films have been overwhelmingly basic in concept, execution, and title. So when you hear that the new Gerard Butler film is called “Plane,” you’d be forgiven for thinking that you can run the entire movie through your head in the blink of an eye. Gerard Butler on a plane (check). He’s probably the pilot (check). There’s probably a criminal onboard (check). The film will be a low-flying, B-grade “Air Force One,” with Butler’s windpipe-smashing grizzled lug saving the day in the same way that Harrison Ford’s heroically resourceful chief executive did.

Actually, no.

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But wouldn’t you know it, he spots land. An island of jungle terrain with a road snaking right through the middle of it. How convenient! Putting on his Sully Sullenberger cap, Brodie is able to make an emergency landing, using the road as a makeshift runway and stranding the shorted-out plane and its 14 passengers on what turns out to be Jolo, a remote island in the Philippines controlled by a ragtag militia of separatist renegades.

Butler is 53 now, and his hardass Scottish valor is aging like fine wine — or, at least, pretty good ale. He has a warm and fuzzy side, which comes out in Brodie’s phone chats with his collegiate daughter, Daniela (Haleigh Hekking), who he was supposed to rendezvous with after the flight. He makes contact with her again in one of the film’s best scenes, set in an abandoned communications hut in the middle of the jungle, where Brodie, in just a few minutes, is able to rewire the phone line, so that he can place a call to Trailblazer Airlines. A war room of corporate troubleshooters, led by a former Special Forces officer played by Tony Goldwyn (who’s like Ryan Seacrest’s sinewy sibling), is standing by, trying to pinpoint the vanished plane’s location. But Brodie, in a distressingly funny scene, gets hooked up to an annoying 21st-century company operator who won’t cooperate with him. (She thinks he’s a prank caller.) So he’s forced to call Daniela.

Even when the Trailblazer folks figure out where the plane is, they can’t just swoop in for the rescue. The Philippines government won’t cooperate; only mercenaries will go in there. Which means that Brodie essentially has to fight the rebels by himself, though he does deputize a partner: Louis, the killer in handcuffs, played by the charismatic Mike Colter, who makes this bruiser a wronged man who nevertheless keeps you guessing. The rest of the passengers cower and bicker — or, in the case of the arrogant businessman Sinclair (Joey Slotnick), bark out orders until the rebels, led by Dele (Yoson An), the short-fused commander who’s like a penny-ante Che Guevara, reduce him to wimpy subservience. They need ransom money to fund their war, a plan that Brodie undercuts with fists, machine guns, surgical espionage timing and extreme piloting skills. “Plane” is fodder, but the picture brazens through its own implausibilities, carried along — and occasionally aloft — by Gerard Butler’s squinty dynamo resolve.

Reviewed at the Park Avenue Screening Room, Jan. 6, 2023. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 107 MIN.

Production: A Lionsgate release of a MadRiver Pictures, Olive Hill Media, Di Bonaventura Pictures, G-BASE Film Productions production. Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Marc Butan, Gerard Butler, Alan Siegel, Jason Constantine, Eda Kowan, Luillo Ruiz. Executive producers: Alastair Burlingham, Michael Cho, J.P. Davis, Vicki Dee Rock, Edward Fee, Tim Lee, Osita O, Gary Raskin.
Crew: Director: Jean-François Richet. Screenplay: Charles Cumming, J.P. Davis. Camera: Brendan Galvin. Editor: David Rosenbloom. Music: Marco Beltrami, Marcus Trumpp.
With: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Evan Dane Taylor, Tony Goldwyn, Daniella Pineda, Paul Ben-Victor, Joey Slotnik.

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User reviews

Gerard Butler and Mike Colter in Plane (2023)

A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he's forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm. A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he's forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm. A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he's forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm.

Jean-François Richet
Charles Cumming
Gerard Butler
Mike Colter
Tony Goldwyn
445 User reviews
187 Critic reviews
62 Metascore

Top cast 46

Brodie Torrance

Louis Gaspare

Samuel Dele

Datu Junmar

Terry Hampton

Bonnie Lane

Brie Taylor

Karim Rahim

Antonio Ortega

Matt Sinclair

Ana Fernández
(as Rose J. Eshay)

Javier Molina

Rosalie Jeong

Riley Donahue
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The studio wanted a different title for the movie, but Gerard Butler insisted on keeping the title simple and went with "Plane."
Goofs On the airport departures board in the beginning of the movie, several destinations are spelled incorrectly: Syndey (Sydney), Soeul (Seoul), Osaka/Kensai (Osaka/Kansai).

Samuel Dele : And you, Sir? English, I'm guessing?

Brodie Torrance : Hell no. I wouldn't lower myself. Nope, I'm Scottish.

Connections Featured in Movie Reviews: Plane (2023)

User reviews 445

Surprisingly white-knuckle.

benjaminskylerhill
Jan 12, 2023
How long is Plane? Powered by Alexa
What is the inspiration for the film?
How was the film made?
What are some of the themes of the film?
January 13, 2023 (United States)
United Kingdom
United States
Puerto Rico
Official site
Alerta extrema
San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA
Di Bonaventura Pictures
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$25,000,000 (estimated)
$32,111,181
$10,265,326
Jan 15, 2023
$74,515,586
Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes

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Plane Reviews

But those who are willing to overlook these missteps in favour of the themes on redemption and perseverance, as well as the confident filmmaking on display, will find themselves greatly rewarded by the film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 16, 2024

It’s just a solid throwback action thriller that feels like a relic from a bygone era, for all its flaws.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 12, 2024

"Plane" doesn't look like much in its trailers, but the film manages to be a decent popcorn thriller.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Butler + Plane = Awesome

Plane is a straightforward movie with very few twists to offer, but the trick to making it engaging lies in its execution. Richet hasn’t made a ton of features, but he’s been in the game long enough to carry out a firm-handed and well-paced effort.

Nobody’s going to declare Plane a classic, but between Richet’s visual acumen and Butler doing admirable diligence to a character who’s in over his head... it’s an enjoyable, fast-paced and surprisingly engaging diversion.

Full Review | Jul 12, 2023

Plane is predictable, and its production values are serviceable, but Gerard Butler is comfortably entertaining from beginning to end.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 5, 2023

Plane offers a sometimes breathless, white-knuckle ride that should particularly appeal to those raised on mid-’90s actioners like Con Air, Air Force One and Sudden Death.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 24, 2023

This is pure popcorn entertainment that delivers on nasty-minded action and heroic temperaments that won’t insult your brain cells when you opt to cheer on the unfolding physicality.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 18, 2023

A big part of the fun of Plane - and Plane is a lot of fun - is the way it rapidly cycles through genres fast enough to touch on all the good stuff without ever making it too obvious that we've seen it all before.

Full Review | May 17, 2023

The plot is hardly innovative -- and some of its more outlandish elements really stretch credibility -- but this is still a gripping enough thriller, boosted by the entertaining lead performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2023

Overlook the forced sentimentality and Plane manages to be a taut thriller with a balance of action, blood, shooting, and heroics that seem plausible. You won’t feel silly cheering or cringing and the popcorn will sit satisfied in your belly.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 18, 2023

Solid and enjoyable filmmaking that knows its limits. No overflowing passenger lists, no shoehorned subplots, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and then some. Truly, "redemption can be found in the most unusual places."

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 18, 2023

…Plane is a straight-up, no-nonsense, gritty action flick that delivers plentiful thrills and spills…

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 13, 2023

Gerard Butler has that Nicolas Cage thing of not phoning in a performance, he's so magnetic in these movies.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 24, 2023

If you like well-made action flicks that don’t need a sequel setup, it’s money well spent. Butler knows what he's doing, and Colter excels in a role with a few layers.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 19, 2023

It's a dumb but entertaining film.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Feb 14, 2023

A film that will be remembered as "that plane movie with Gerard Butler". [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Feb 14, 2023

Plane does not reinvent the wheel but does land an action-movie punch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2023

Plane is a film that is an experience to behold in cinemas, and an entertaining one at that.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Feb 10, 2023

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‘Plane’ Review: Flight, Camera, Action

In this thriller, Gerard Butler and Mike Colter have to avoid a hostage situation and deliver a plane full of passengers to safety.

Share full article

Two men hold guns and crouch low to the ground.

By Glenn Kenny

Jesters on social media have already begun chortling about this movie’s minimalist title. Where did the snakes go ?

The movie’s basic designation is not without precedent. Some of you may remember “Airport” and its several sequels. Most of those movies spent the majority of their time in the air rather than in the terminal, so maybe it figures that most of the action in this thriller, directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”), is set on the ground.

The twist is that this ground is unsafe in a way that a boarding gate rarely is. Butler plays Brodie, a pilot whose Singapore-to-Tokyo flight — after which he is to reunite with his beloved daughter, because of course — is downed by violent weather. With his co-pilot and fellow family man Dele (Yoson An), Brodie manages a landing on an unidentified island run by “separatists and militias,” whose leader, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), has the nasty habit of ransoming, and sometimes killing, hostages. Brodie, determined to deliver his passengers to safety, powers through the jungle in search of a way to communicate with home.

If you guessed that the handcuffed convict who’s part of the flight’s manifest is actually a not-wholly-bad guy looking for a shot at redemption, go to the head of the class. Playing that part, Colter makes a good match with the stalwart Butler. Half a world away, Tony Goldwyn clenches his jaw in a kitted-out corporate conference room as the only honest crisis manager in the airline biz.

This is a pacey item that can be recommended on the grounds that it’s a January release that’s not even close to awful. “Plane” sinks (or rises, depending on your perspective) to “hell yeah” ridiculousness only at the end, delivering a punchline that lands at the right time.

Plane Rated R for bloody violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters.

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Review: In ‘Plane,’ action star Gerard Butler once again sticks the landing

Two men holding weapons and squatting in the movie "Plane."

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The villains of the 2022 holiday season were the airlines, so it’s an apt moment for the Gerard Butler action vehicle “Plane” to take flight. The film’s inciting incident involves a cost-cutting safety checker at Trailblazer Airlines insisting that Captain Brodie Torrance (Butler) pilot through a storm instead of around it in order to save fuel during a New Year’s flight from Singapore to Tokyo. Of course, since this is a Gerard Butler action film, the passengers on Trailblazer Flight 119 don’t end up stranded for days in an airport but rather fighting for their lives on a remote island in the Philippines ruled by a separatist militia whose primary source of income is hostages.

Not to worry though, because Butler’s Brodie isn’t your average airline pilot — he’s an airline pilot who can kill bad guys with his bare hands. Plus, he has backup in the form of Mike Colter, and the two actors make a fine, fun and appealingly masculine pair in “Plane.”

Consider this meet-cute: Brodie Torrance is a widowed former Royal Air Force pilot stuck flying long-haul budget flights thanks to a viral video in which he put down an unruly passenger with a chokehold (his signature move, as we’ll come to find out). Louis Gaspare (Colter) is a convicted murderer who has been on the lam for 15 years, now being extradited from Bali to the United States. When Louis ends up on Brodie’s flight, sparks fly (from machine gun fire) as they battle the aforementioned separatist militia to save the passengers and get Brodie back to his daughter (Haleigh Hekking) in Hawaii.

Jean-François Richet’s “Plane” is as efficient, economical and effective as its title, which is a good one, actually — clear, descriptive, communicates what the film is about. The characterization in the screenplay by Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis is lean to the point of scanty, but we’re given just enough to suffice, and any more would be overkill.

Much like the aircraft itself for the majority of “Plane,” this taut thriller remains grounded and gritty, and once we’re on land, Puerto Rico — subbing for the Philippines — offers a sense of texture and realism to the humid setting. Richet methodically strings the tension, alternating with bursts of chaotic violence, showing us that Brodie is capable of both method and madness. Sometimes it’s a carefully orchestrated and silent extraction of hostages; sometimes it’s a brutal, bruising brawl as Brodie wrestles an assailant into submission, captured in a single handheld take. Butler’s fighting style is similar to the film’s: brawny, unshowy, effectual and explosive only when necessary.

Far away from the steamy Filipino jungles, we see the inner workings of the Trailblazer war room, headed up by Tony Goldwyn in full hambone mode as crisis manager David Scarsdale, bossing around the top exec (Paul Ben-Victor) and calling in the mercenaries. With Butler’s stoic heroism, plus the behind-the-scenes corporate jockeying, “Plane” feels like the action-thriller version of “Sully” with a nod toward Tobias Lindholm’s “A Hijacking,” but without the bleak condemnation of a corporate culture that negotiates the price of human lives.

The villains on the ground are a group of bloodthirsty rebels with great hair, and the leader, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), is so cool you almost want to root for him (considering they crashed onto his island), but there is, of course, the murdering of innocent hostages. However, don’t expect any political nuance or social commentary out of “Plane.” If you go into it expecting nothing more than to enjoy watching a sweaty Butler manhandle some bad guys while Colter manhandles him, you’ll be more than satisfied with the ride “Plane” offers — a well-executed hunk of pulpy entertainment.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Rated: R, for violence and language Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes Playing: Starts Jan. 13 in general release

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‘Plane’ Review: A Fun, Sturdy, and Violent Gerard Butler Vehicle

David ehrlich.

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As sturdy, weathered, and no-frills as the Reagan-era passenger jet that lends this January-ass film its poetically blunt title, Jean-François Richet’s “ Plane ” becomes the most airworthy Gerard Butler vehicle this side of “Greenland” by answering a question that Clint Eastwood didn’t even have the courage to ask: What if, instead of ditching US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River like a total loser, Capt. Sully Sullenberger had been man enough to land that baby in the middle of a steroidal ’80s action movie? You know the kind! The sort where vaguely racist man-vs.-army spectacle that finds a couple of jacked-up English-speaking everymen forced to kill their way out of a sweltering foreign jungle full of indigenous militants, and climaxes with the bad guys loading the shoulder-mounted rocket-launchers that Southeast Asian henchmen always keep on hand in case Sylvester Stallone ever decides to reboot “Rambo” again.

No disrespect to Sully, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to save any of his passengers from Philippines’ lawless Jolo island cluster, a wretched hive of scum and villainy that the national army has forfeited to ISIS and its ilk. Luckily enough for the motley crew of hot people and character actors aboard Trailblazer Airlines’ ill-fated New Years Eve flight from Singapore to Tokyo, a swarthy widowed Scotsman by the name of Brodie Torrance (Butler, duh) is in the cockpit tonight, and nothing on Earth will stop him from getting back home to his beloved daughter, whatever her name is.

Nothing!! Not the lightning storm that he’s forced to fly through because his corporate overlords value profits above human lives, or the ultra-violent separatists who control the sweaty jungle where he’s forced to crash land the plane, or even the Luke Cage-sized prisoner ( Mike Colter as Louis Gaspare, exuding screen presence for days) who Brodie was transporting on the plane and refuses to let out of handcuffs…even though it’s hard to be a flight-risk without a functioning aircraft, and the guy hasn’t committed any crimes since killing someone 16 years ago.

Needless to say, Brodie — who got stuck flying shit routes after punching a passenger on camera, presumably while in a grief-related tailspin — may not be the only beefcake who finds a shot at redemption on the Jolo islands. Not that it matters. This may come as a shock to you, but this story isn’t particularly concerned with the pathos of its characters. After all, the movie about Sully was called “Sully,” while the movie about Brodie Torrance is called “Plane.” And even so, we still never get to find out what kind of plane it is!

Which isn’t to suggest that Richet’s film is uninterested in how to fly it. Co-written by airport novelist Charles Cumming (who originally envisioned it as a book), “Plane” is dad cinema par avion and par excellence , geared significantly more towards middle-aged crowds hungry for raw meat than it is toward anyone hoping for a goofy cheese-fest. Where other movies like it might be over-eager to get to the action, it’s endearing how patiently this threadbare, 107-minute romp sinks into the cockpit and lets Brodie go over his little checklists like he’s a real pilot. It’s here that Richet proves himself a worthy substitute for Butler’s usual go-to Ric Roman Waugh, and the rhythm of these early scenes helps set the tone for a film that feels plenty grounded long before it’s knocked out of the sky, and remains so well after the killing starts.

Butler knows his strengths like the back of a bad guy’s broken neck, and he’s seldom flexed them better than he does here; he’s become one of 21st century Hollywood’s few bonafide movie stars by embracing the fact that he was so obviously born to be a late 20th century movie star , and it’s endearing to watch him inspire competent schlock that’s willing to match his sincerity punch-for-punch. “Plane” is tense when it’s supposed to be tense, gratuitously violent when it needs to deliver the gore (it’s been a minute since you’ve seen a bad guy’s body get emulsified by heavy artillery like it does here), and the CGI is just strong enough to cling on for dear life during a third act that can afford some dodgy-looking effects.

The supporting cast also adds to the project’s general air of credibility. “Cowboy Bebop” actress Daniella Pineda adds some winsome flair to her thankless role as a flight attendant, “Mulan” breakout Yoson An makes for a sweetly devoted co-pilot, the ever-recognizable Joey Slotnick does fine work as the token “most annoying passenger in the world,” while Tony Goldwyn and Paul Ben-Victor anchor the airline’s crisis response with immaculate cruelty during the scenes they share in a New York board room.

Half-Filipino stuntman and fight coordinator Evan Dane Taylor probably won’t inspire any glowing odes to Southeast Asian representation for his performance as the murderous pirate leader whose livelihood depends on kidnapping white foreigners for ransom money, but the guy looks great on screen, and exudes the clenched sort of villainy that’s needed to sell a movie like this.

That the Puerto Rico-shot “Plane” generally makes the Philippines look like a third-world hellscape whose government won’t lift a finger to save people in a crisis is only somewhat softened by the film’s similarly damning take on American capitalism; it’s a cruel world, and the only real heroes we have are a few sweaty men who are willing to go commando — or at least go “Commando” — when people threaten to kill them with machine guns. “Plane” may not take you anywhere you’ve never gone before, but if you’re buying a ticket to a movie called “Plane,” odds are it will get you exactly where you want to go.

Lionsgate will release “Plane” in theaters on Friday, January 13.