GERARD BUTLER KEEPS 'PLANE' GROUNDED

After “Airplane!” “Airport,” “Up in the Air,” “Flight,” “Snakes on a Plane,” “Non-Stop” and “The Terminal,” we have finally arrived, like weary passengers reaching an unexotic destination, at “Plane.”

The Gerard Butler thriller, straight and to the point, has dispensed with anything too complicated in its title. We can, no doubt, look forward to future installments like “Bus,” “Automobile” and, if we’re lucky, “Boat.”

But if “Plane,” which opens in theaters Friday, seems, well, kind of plain, it effectively reflects the ethos of Jean-François Richet’s straightforward and serviceable action flick. Man fly plane. Plane go down. Man (maybe) fly plane again.

And Butler has gotten quite good at keeping these kinds of movies grounded. He plays Brodie Torrance, a pilot for Trailblazer Airlines whose next flight is a New Year’s run from Singapore to Tokyo. Despite a worrisome storm system in between, he’s ordered by the airline to fly directly through it, to economize fuel.