Gerard Butler almost exclusively makes what could broadly be described as Gerard Butler movies, and while nobody wants to be typecast or pigeonholed, the results speak for themselves. Plane is the ass-kicking Scotsman’s latest endeavor, and it’s proven to be one of his most popular yet.
At the time of writing, no film in the actor’s entire back catalogue has scored a higher audience average on Rotten Tomatoes than the 94 percent Jean-François Richet’s high-octane action thriller is currently sitting on, while the critical consensus has it ranked as his third best-reviewed bone-cruncher ever behind only Copshop and Greenland.
That just goes to show that folks love seeing Butler doing what he does best, even if Plane puts a relatively new spin on the standard formula by having the leading man play a character out of their depth. Pilot Brodie Torrance gets a lot more than he bargained for when he’s forced to make an emergency landing over enemy terrain, and it’s admittedly a novelty seeing the notorious neck-snapper refuse to kill anybody.
Luckily, Mike Colter’s convicted murderer Louis Gaspare picks up the slack on that end, with at-home viewers getting their kicks out of Plane this weekend. The film might still be playing in theaters, but it’s nonetheless emerged to become one of the Top 10 most popular hits on Amazon in the United States, while it’s also the number one film on iTunes in America, per FlixPatrol.
Evidently, more examples of Butler doing Butler things are most welcome, so let’s hope he doesn’t let us down on that front.