Netflix’s New #1 Movie Is An Overlooked, Must-Watch Action Thriller

I am guessing there are more than a few people looking at the #1 movie on Netflix right now and being very confused. That movie is “Plane.” No, not Flight Risk, not Carry-On, not Redeye, not even Snakes on a Plane. Just…Plane.

While that title may sound goofy, and the film may be a bit goofy, Plane happens to be an actually kind of great action-thriller. It has a very solid 79% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes with almost two hundred reviews in, but better yet, an amazing 94% critic score, which is a genuine rarity in the space. Here’s the premise of the action movie:

“In the white-knuckle action movie PLANE, pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) saves his passengers from a lightning strike by making a risky landing on a war-torn island — only to find that surviving the landing was just the beginning. When most of the passengers are taken hostage by dangerous rebels, the only person Torrance can count on for help is Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an accused murderer who was being transported by the FBI. In order to rescue the passengers, Torrance will need Gaspare’s help, and will learn there’s more to Gaspare than meets the eye.”

Gerard Butler has the same power that Jason Statham has, where it seems like he’s always making some sort of variant of the same action movie, but they’re very watchable and sometimes very good, even if cheesy at times. Butler has starred in two Den of Thieves movies, the Has Fallen series, the OG breakout role 300, and most recently, reprised his How to Train Your Dragon role in live-action for the enormously successful, widely praised adaptation.

The other half of the coin here is Mike Colter, who you will probably either recognize from the excellent supernatural drama Evil or his time in the MCU as Luke Cage, where it’s been hinted that he may return to that part in this new Daredevil: Born Again era. I’ve never seen him be bad in anything, and that appears to be true in Plane as well.

Plane is not a Netflix original despite hitting #1 on the service. It only made $74 million worldwide in theaters, so it was not exactly a blockbuster smash, but it’s certainly getting a lot of viewership now. It unseated Tyler Perry’s Straw and is ahead of the popular documentary Titan about the Oceangate Submersible disaster.

Netflix has been hit or miss when it comes to its action films. Its best offerings are probably the Extraction series, but some of its higher profile attempts, Red Notice and The Gray Man come to mind, have not landed critically. But hey, that’s what licensing is for. Check out Plane now, even if it sounds a bit silly.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.