6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 3.8 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he's forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm.
Starring: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, Paul Ben-Victor, Tony GoldwynAction | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Adventure | Insignificant |
Video codec: HEVC / H.265
Video resolution: 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby Atmos
English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 kbps)
English SDH, French, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Digital copy
4K Ultra HD
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
At least within the subset of travelers who are also film fans, it's kind of amazing that anyone has flown since at least The High and the Mighty and/or Airport. But people do keep flying, at least in any number of film or television properties where they quickly find out maybe their travel plans are not going to go exactly as planned. Plane is about as generically named as Airport, and in a way it really doesn't try to exhibit any outsized ambitions, though it at least tweaks the "disaster film" premise a bit by having a troubled airliner actually make a landing, albeit not in the most hospitable of locations. That plot point, which finds the survivors of the crash suddenly confronted with guerrilla type villains, was evidently a bit too close for comfort for some officials in the Philippines, who evidently took umbrage at the depiction of the island of Jolo as under the sway of paramilitary thugs. While that particular aspect at least gives the film a bit of energy, the screenplay also attempts to work in a kind of mismatched partners element courtesy of the teaming of the jet's captain, Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler), and Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an international fugitive who was being extradited back to the halls of justice to face a murder charge. Suffice it to say that Torrance and Gaspare together have their own "particular set of skills" to help them overcome any number of obstacles, with the film genuinely upping the angst ante courtesy of uncertainty as to whether the so-called "and the rest" innocent bystander passengers are going to make it through the maelstrom unscathed. The fact that Torrance is white and Gaspare is black, and at least initially in handcuffs, perhaps can't help but recall The Defiant Ones, which is in its own way arguably one of the more surprising referents Plane offers.
Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 disc included in this package.
Plane is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Lionsgate Films with a 2160p transfer in 2.39:1. The closing credits have the Arri logo, and the
IMDb lists a 4K DI. This is an often very impressive looking 4K presentation, one that ups the detail ante from an already excellent 1080 version while
also offering some interesting tonal highlights in a palette which is often rather "cool" and skewed toward blues, greens and teals in an otherwise
tropical setting. In fact, the difference between some of the blue hued interior plane material and the brightly lit outdoor scenes once those start
showing up is even more noticeable in this version courtesy of HDR and/or Dolby Vision. The 4K version also improves, if only marginally, on shadow
detail in the sequence where the plane loses power and everything "goes dark", and later interior scenes in some relatively murky situations also show
at least some improvement in detail levels and just general discernability in this version. This is another 4K presentation where the addition of digital
grain is arguably a bit more noticeable at the increased resolution, but commendably this technique has not been slathered on, and while perhaps not
"truly" cinematic, it offers a bit of texture that is especially noticeable against brighter backgrounds. Kind of interestingly, some of the jungle material
in particular looks just slightly desaturated, without the fulsome suffusion that is generally apparent in this presentation.
Plane features a nicely bombastic Dolby Atmos track that engages the surround channels virtually from the get go and then keeps them engaged consistently enough that my hunch is most audiophiles will be more than satisfied. While some of the early surround activity is relatively "mundane", offering a representation of the background clamor of an airport, and even the initial scenes as the flight begins tend to be subtle in side and rear channel engagement, once the plane encounters a violent storm, there's a whirlwind of surround activity that clearly engages all of the channels and provides a thrilling if disturbing sonic experience. Once the flight has more or less crash landed, a glut of jungle ambient environmental sounds keeps the surround channels active, and of course the frequent action sequences offer nice discrete placement of everything from bones shattering in hand to hand combat to the firing of guns. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are available.
Both the 4K UHD and 1080 discs in this package sport the same slate of supplemental material:
Kind of amusingly, the Main Menu on this disc offers an "in flight" announcement that the film being shown will indeed be Plane, but my hunch is few if any actual flights will be offering this outing for passengers, since flyers are often nervous enough without wondering if they're going to crash land on a Philippine island being run by insurgents. This film is unabashedly preposterous a lot of the time, but it's also genuinely exciting and well staged. Technical merits are solid and the few supplements enjoyable. Recommended.
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