Opening on Friday, January 13 is a fitting day for this action filled adventure to hit American screens. The bad luck pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) must face nearly insurmountable action to save the Plane.
Director Jean-Francis Richet waists little time getting the characters and the audience into a flight in South East Asia, moving north toward Tokyo facing even more violent weather than predicted.
The cinematography by Brendan Galvin is framed to give the audience the feeling of experiencing what it is like in the crippled aircraft as the pilot Brodie works to keep the aircraft in the air. Everything goes wrong including loss of electric power, a few pieces falling off, and vibration that causes death of a flight attendant and even more critical the loss of the FBI agent who is holding Louis Gaspare (Mike Butan) a murder convict to be returned to face his sentence.
As the flight goes down the company bigwigs (Paul Ben-Victor and Tony Goldwyn) argue about the best PR to use and how they might save the lives of the passengers onboard. Joey Slotnick has the traditional role of the passenger who complains and does not want to follow orders from the captain.
The first half hour on the flight is the best part of the film, once on the ground we see a typical set of conflicts between the non government anarchists and the folks from the flight who must find a way to win the physical battle to survive.
But director Richet gets to us with the action filled first half hour. What happened inside the plane will make folks a little less comfortable when flying, even though the back up systems have kept our Skys safe for a long period of time.
Over all, Gerard Butler once again gives us an action filled escape from reality, this time in the sky.