Plane: A suspenseful flight

Plane (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and considerable violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

The new year’s first action-oriented release is one helluva ride.

 

Gerard Butler has been ill-served by some of his recent thrillers, the low point being 2016’s London Has Fallen. Happily, director Jean-François Richet’s high-octane roller coaster is a lean and mean cut above, thanks in great part to Charles Cumming and J.P. Davis’ sharply crafted script.

 

Having just realized that they've crash-landed on a remote island ruled by murderous
extremists, commercial pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler, left) and mysterious
companion Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter) check out the opposition ... which is
overwhelming.

Their edge-of-the-seat storyline beings with a nail-biting first act, detours into an unexpectedly scary second act, and then pulls out all the stops for an exciting, crowd-pleasing finale. The package also gets plenty of pizzazz from Butler’s charismatic presence and hard-charging grit.

Sacramento’s sold-out Tuesday evening preview audience — full houses being a rare sight, these days — applauded as the end credits began to roll. 

 

No surprise.

 

Events begin during final pre-flight check at the Singapore terminal of Trailblazer Airlines, a low-budget carrier taking off for Tokyo, and then Hawaii, under the command of Captain Brodie Torrance (Butler, his Scottish accent in full glory) and co-pilot Samuel Dele (Yoson An). It’s a quiet New Year’s Eve flight, with only 14 passengers … until the last minute arrival of a shackled Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter, well remembered as TV’s Luke Cage), being shepherded to the States by an FBI handler.

 

They sit in the far rear.

 

Torrance is dismayed when a Trailblazer bean-counter insists that he pilot through a storm en route to Tokyo, rather than take a slightly longer route around it, in order to save a modest amount of fuel. But he’s a company man, and does as instructed.

 

But all hell breaks loose when they hit the storm.

 

The subsequent 15 minutes are apt to put you off flying for good: a terrifying, persuasive depiction of helpless passengers buffeted and tossed about after the plane is crippled by a lightning strike. (Well … persuasive during all interior shots, anyway; the exterior model and/or CGI shots leave something to be desired.)

 

The white-knuckle anxiety is enhanced by the deftly sketched relationships that have developed between the veteran Torrance and younger Dele, and head flight attendant Bonnie (Daniella Pineda). A few passengers also stand out: boorish, entitled businessman Sinclair (Oliver Trevena, immediately loathsome); the mildly confrontational Carver (Oliver Trevena); and giggly, under-dressed social media influencers Katie (Kelly Gale) and Brie (Lilly Krug).

 

Thanks to skill and dollops of luck, Torrance manages a miraculous landing on a stretch of road somewhere within one of the Philippines' many island clusters. The crew and passengers don’t actually know this yet, since the plane’s avionics were fried, and there’s no cell service. (Constant Companion sagely wondered why commercial flight crews wouldn’t be equipped with satellite phones, but that would have ruined this story’s suspense.)

Get Hard: Rather limp

Get Hard (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for pervasive crude and sexual content, relentless profanity, graphic nudity and drug references
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.27.15

If relentless vulgarity and blithe racism, sexism and homophobia can be considered an art form, then I guess Will Ferrell is a Rembrandt.

"Trapped" within the confines of the faux jail cell made from his own study, James (Will
Ferrell, center) nervously awaits the moment when his house staff and grounds keeper
will "pretend" to beat on him, prison-style, while Darnell (Kevin Hart, right) supervises.

There may be a racial, gender or religious faction left unsmeared by Ferrell’s newest foray into moron comedy, but it’d be hard to determine who got left behind.

And, no doubt, that would have been an oversight. I’m sure scripters Adam McKay, Jay Martel, Ian Roberts and Etan Cohen — the latter also occupying the director’s chair — intended to be equal-opportunity offensive.

Get Hard is typical Ferrell, with the Saturday Night Live veteran swanning through yet another contrived plot constructed around its boorish sight gags. By no means can what Ferrell does be termed acting, since his entire persona is built around a naïve twit alter-ego who cheerfully, unwittingly, insults and outrages everybody within his orbit.

This gimmick has served him well for 20 years, so I guess he sees no reason to change. And it could be argued that viewer indignation and disgust are tempered by the fact that Ferrell works hardest to make fun of himself. He clearly knows that his various screen characters are ignorant, clueless boobs, and he revels in their boobishness.

Which, in a weird way, makes his behavior more palatable.

A bit more palatable, anyway.

Because — as always is the case — a little of Will Ferrell goes a long, long way, and 100  minutes of him in Get Hard might have been difficult to endure ... were in not for the truly hilarious presence of co-star Kevin Hart.

Frankly, Hart should get top billing. He runs away with this film, stealing every scene he’s in, and he’s a helluva lot funnier than Ferrell. Hart has the rhythmic physical grace, streetwise savvy and impeccable comic timing of a young Eddie Murphy at his prime: a vibrant screen presence that couldn’t be a more welcome alternative to Ferrell’s insipid white-bread doofus.