The Most High-Octane Action Scenes In Plane, Ranked

It's not officially January until Gerard Butler brings audiences another '90s throwback action B-movie. Don't be fooled by the generic title, "Plane" is a tense, action-packed thrill ride that feels like a movie ripped from the shelves of Blockbuster Video. In the age of gigantic CGI tentpoles, we don't get movies like this often enough. /Film's own Ryan Scott sums it up in his "Plane" review: "It's not tongue-in-cheek, it's just a movie being about what it's about, and that is fun when it needs to be fun. It's tense when it needs to be tense. And damned if it doesn't work in the end."

Butler plays disgraced captain Brodie Torrance, who's piloting a near-empty New Year's Eve flight. A convicted murderer, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), is brought onboard with his U.S. Marshal escort, and that's just the first sign this will be a very bumpy flight. When his corporate goon boss makes Brodie take a dangerous route through a massive storm to save fuel, lightning strikes, and the plane loses power. They are forced to emergency land on the nearest island, which happens to be overrun by a separatist militia. After the crew and passengers get taken hostage, it's up to the unlikely duo of Brodie and Louis to rescue them and figure out a way off this island. "Plane" is a total blast from start to finish, taking cues from classic disaster movies and survival thrillers, with a healthy dose of reluctant hero tropes and a dash of the buddy cop genre. So let's soar through the most high-octane moments from the film. 

Attention passengers, major spoilers ahead!

Shortly after the crash, Brodie and Louis search for a way to call for help. The remaining crew and passengers stay behind, only to be discovered by the local separatist militia, who quickly herd them up. A woman tries to run and is gunned down. Her husband screams in agony, only to be swiftly beheaded by the militia's ruthless leader, Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor). It's brutal. Once the militia takes the hostages, leaving only two of their members behind to sift through the luggage, Brodie and Louis snap into action.

This scene immediately establishes the extreme violence the separatists are willing to casually inflict on their hostages. While the beheading isn't explicitly shown, the fact that it happens while the other passengers and Louis and Brodie look on helplessly makes the moment gut-wrenching. Junmar and his men have no qualms about killing any of these hostages at a moment's notice, so the stakes are enormous. There's also great conflict between Brodie and Louis, where Brodie wants to run in guns blazing to help, but Louis advises a more tactical approach. Louis blasts one of the remaining bad guys and forces information from the other before killing him too. Brodie may be the more remorseful hero who wants to save his passengers but is not ready to kill. Louis is more on the side of "whatever it takes."

Brodie and Louis track the hostages to a nearby village. Louis tells Brodie to be quiet and not use guns unless necessary. They move about like Solid Snake from "Metal Gear Solid," avoiding detection by the various militia members spread throughout. Louis sneaks up behind one bad guy and slits his throat, while Brodie attempts to choke the other out, only to have Louis finish the job quickly with his knife. They find the hostages, and Louis grabs a sledgehammer, smashes one of the guard's heads in, rounds the corner to cave in another's skull and gives him a couple more smashing hits for good measure.

Louis bringing the pain to this particular set of bad guys is quick and dirty, but also a moment that elicits genuine gasps from the audience. Until now, the violence has been a bit more restrained or off-camera. But when we see Louis slice through an unnamed baddie's neck and blood spray out, we know things are about to get messier as soon as he picks up the sledgehammer. Louis is also a bit of an enigma. We're told he murdered someone 15 years ago. He claims things aren't always what they seem, and there are hints of him seeking redemption by saving Brodie and the hostages, all while still unleashing gnarly violent attacks like this double whammy of hammer time. We know he's a badass, and for now, we're just happy he's on Brodie's side.

Brodie and Louis rescue the hostages and load them up in a nearby bus, only to realize they can't drive away without attracting the entire militia's attention (and gunfire). Brodie realizes their only play is if he gives himself up as a distraction. Louis asks Brodie to think about his family, to which Brodie replies, "What about their families?" It's a selfless act, and one we know deep down he'll survive, but it's not looking good once Junmar and his soldiers circle Brodie and start pummeling him. Luckily, the airline sent in a group of mercenaries who happened to descend upon Brodie's location in the nick of time. 

We've seen what Louis can do and what Brodie will do when backed into a corner, but now the big guns have arrived, and they have come to win. When Shellback (Remi Adeleke) and his team show up, it's all business as they take out militia members with precision and efficiency. The gunfight is realistically choreographed, with each member offering cover fire to get Brodie out safely. Bad guys drop like flies and are outmatched by these trained professionals. It's a bit of a Deus Ex Machina moment, but one that works because it's been well-established this team has been tracking Brodie and the hostages. So even if their exact time of arrival is a bit convenient for the plot, it still makes it satisfying to see this gun battle play out. 

After narrowly escaping the militia, Brodie and his co-pilot Dele (Yoson An) make an impossible takeoff through a hail of bullets and RPGs (we'll get to that later). Once in the air, it seems like their only hope is a water landing, so they brace to be part of the world's worst splash zone, only to see land at the last minute. Brodie lands the plane with no fuel, engines, or proper steering capabilities and nearly wrecks their landing gear in the process, finally allowing the characters to breathe a sigh of relief. 

This is the perfect example of the "but wait, there's more" moment in nearly every '90s action movie. When the characters think they're out of the woods after escaping the armed-to-the-teeth militia, now they have a plane that's barely hanging on and seemingly nowhere to land. It gives the audience one last jolt of adrenaline and allows Brodie to do what he does best, fly. Brodie isn't a fighter, he's a pilot, and he's been thrown into a fish-out-of-water scenario. Still, his determination to keep his passengers safe (as he says, "My passengers, my responsibility") brings out the hero in him. His expertise and calm under extreme pressure are why he and his passengers get to see their families again. 

Brodie finds a damaged landline and repairs it enough to call the airline dispatch, who, for the sake of dramatic effect, thinks he's just a crank caller. He hangs up and calls his daughter. He narrowly gets out enough details of their whereabouts before being attacked by a stray separatist member. What follows is an exhaustive one-take beatdown, ending with Brodie finally choking out his aggressor and shots ringing out to reveal Louis took out two more bad guys coming his way. 

This sequence stands out for its choreography and Gerard Butler's performance. Butler has played plenty of tough guys that can dispatch baddies without breaking a sweat, but Brodie is far more of a scrappy everyman than your typical action hero. It genuinely feels like a man fighting with every fiber of his being to survive. Both combatants are taking hits, grappling, and choking each other out, as Brodie claws around for anything to help him fight. The bad guy even drags Brodie back to him, only to receive a few swift kicks to the face. The camera never cuts away, giving the viewer an unblinking front-row seat to this animalistic struggle for survival. In our "Plane" interview with Butler, he said if there was "one thing missed out of 60 different moves, you had to start from scratch." And that the goal of this "oner" was to "watch these guys go at it and just be so incredibly desperate and fighting tooth and nail for everything." 

The trailer touts the plane "crash was only the beginning," but it sure is one helluva way to begin this action thriller. We get just enough time with Brodie, the flight attendant Bonnie (Daniella Pineda), co-pilot Dele (Yoson An), and glimpses of the passengers to be invested when everything goes south. What starts as above-average turbulence escalates to nearly ripping the plane apart. Brodie and Dele fly above the storm to 40,000 feet, only to be struck by lightning, lose power, and have 10 minutes to land somewhere before they become the world's largest falling rock. The ocean is too choppy for a safe water landing, so they make an emergency ditch effort to land on an isolated island. 

This entire sequence is shot with dizzying, nausea-inducing immediacy, but not in your standard too-many-quick-cuts way of modern action movies. The shaky camera is deliberate and puts the audience in the cockpit and main cabin with the characters as they experience every nervous flyer's worst nightmare multiplied by a thousand. In a moment sure to make passengers think twice about disobeying the "fasten seatbelts" sign, the Marshal and a flight attendant get flung so hard their necks snap, and both die instantly. And we're not claiming to be experts, but the troubleshooting Brodie and Dele go through as they attempt to keep this plane in the air seems pretty realistic. Nothing ever dips into the usual eye-roll-inducing moments of lesser "disaster" movies. Filming the crash in such a visceral way will have audiences gripping their armrests. 

"Plane" doesn't just jump into the action and shootouts. Each set piece methodically builds on the last, so it never peaks too early. With that in mind, it's no surprise the most high-octane moment on our list is the showdown between the mercs and the separatists. With a rescue team still 24 hours away and the militia closing in, the only way out is up. Bullets fly (and several bodies, thanks to a very high-caliber sniper rifle), vehicles are wrecked, and good guys are wounded, all while Brodie preps the plane for emergency take-off. When you think it can't get any better, Brodie plays chicken with his aircraft and an RPG-wielding Junmar in a spectacularly bonkers way to off the big bad. 

We never experience action fatigue from "Plane" because each escalating bit of action remains grounded while adding something new to the mix. In this case, the sniper rifle nearly steals the show, launching bad guys off their feet and obliterating them upon impact. Juxtaposing the violent spectacle on display is Brodie risking his life amidst the gunfire to prep the landing gear, even taking a couple of bullets during the fray. But the real show-stopper is Junmar missing his shot with the RPG and then being smashed by the plane's front tire. The film's wild moment was Gerard Butler's idea, who said, "I just want everybody to know that that was my moment. Although I'm sure a lot of people will be like, 'Are you kidding me, that's ridiculous.'" Not us. We think it's the perfect level of ridiculous.