Saturday, C4, 9:15pm
*Plane* (2023) — the title may not win awards for imagination, but the film certainly delivers its fair share of mid-air mayhem and grounded grit. Starring Gerard Butler as Brodie Torrance, a pilot with more guts than most nations’ air forces, the film opens with a New Year’s Eve flight that goes predictably pear-shaped. After a lightning strike forces an emergency landing on a rebel-controlled island in the Philippines, Torrance teams up with Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), a convict who might just be the most useful seatmate in cinematic history. What follows is a blend of survival thriller and action flick, as the duo battles insurgents, airline bureaucracy, and their own bad luck.
Musically speaking, *Plane* takes off thanks to the combined efforts of Marco Beltrami and Marcus Trumpp — a pairing that sounds like a lost Victorian crime duo but is in fact a formidable scoring team. Beltrami, a genre chameleon best known for his work on *A Quiet Place* and *3:10 to Yuma*, brings his signature tightrope walk of tension and melancholy. The score is a proper sonic white-knuckle ride, full of jagged strings, low-end thuds, and a heartbeat-skipping use of silence. The opening track, “The Plane Main Titles,” sets the tone with brooding brass and uneasy rhythms, while “Storm” and “Hostages” give you aural vertigo. It’s not just background noise — it’s an extension of the film’s panic and pulse.
Soundtrack collectors will find much to admire here. The score was released digitally in February 2023, and while there’s no word yet of a limited-edition vinyl pressing, one suspects it would look splendid in storm-grey with a lightning bolt splatter. The soundtrack stands alone surprisingly well, which is always the mark of a good film score — you could easily pop it on during a particularly intense commute and pretend you're evading guerrilla fighters while trying not to spill your flat white. Overall, *Plane* might be a film that sticks to genre flight paths, but its score soars with more ambition than its title suggests.
- Paul Allen