Money Plane (2020)

Ambition is important in film making and it is always reassuring to see film-makers pushing as hard as they can against their budgets to produce something creative and dynamic. Unfortunately those behind Money Plane found themselves somewhat defeated by lack of funds. Their name actors including Kelsey Grammar, Denise Richards and Thomas Jane all look like they did a single day’s filming at individual locations. Like a number of Bruce Willis’ recent films the leads have their scenes spread across the movie but over relatively few scenes and single locations to make their involvement appear more extensive than it actually was. I would be very surprised if Denise Richards shot her role in more than a few hours. An art gallery exterior is clearly some kind of poorly maintained transport depot and its interior (and several others in the film) are standard rooms dressed up with a few drapes to obscure unwanted details. Much of the plot takes place inside a plane interior set which looks like one of those frequently rented interiors seen in many Hollywood lensed films and TV series of recent decades. That said the plot mechanics are reasonably well executed and there are some effective action sequences involving close-up fights in confined areas that bring to mind the editing style and effectiveness of the train compartment fight in From Russia With Love (1963). A strain of very dark humour also runs through the film, with the outcome of a Russian roulette game, a graphic description of one of the things the gamblers can bet on and a misunderstanding between villain and henchman as to intent being especially smile-inducing. Much of the acting is adequate if not exceptional and Kelsey Grammar in particular devolves into a shouting, self-declamatory approach when it is not really needed. Katrina Norman is especially good as one of the crew assembled to take down the Money Plane and is an actor I will look out for in the future. With a brisk running time of 82 minutes this mostly overcomes its budget limitations to be a fun and darkly comic action adventure. As an ambitious B-grade film I found it mostly very satisfying.

I actually quite liked the premiss here. "Reese" (Adam Copeland) is $40 million in the hole to Kelsey Grammer's "Grouch". To settle up he must plan and execute a daring robbery 35,000 feet up in the air. Their target? Well that is an aeroplane that is used as a luxury casino/brothel where those on board, beyond the reach of the law, can indulge themselves at will. Along with his pals "Isabella" (Katrina Norman) and "Paterson/McGullicuddy" (Patrick Lamont Jr.) they infiltrate this elite gang of thugs and hoodlums (and bad actors) and attempt to beam all of their funds to their pal "Iggy" (Andrew Lawrence) waiting on the ground with an upturned dustbin lid pointing at the plane. Regrettably, I just couldn't quite place the "Concierge" - and that occupied my brain far more than any of the banal dialogue, repetitive and pretty preposterous fight scenes and the shockingly poor performance from the always massively over-rated Grammer - about as intimidating as yesterday's milk. Then it hit me - "Melissa & Joey" - that is were I had seen him! One of those daytime, wallpaper, "comedy" series. Phew, I was out of my misery - and just as director Andrew Lawrence decided to do the same for everyone else. If only the ending had happened nearer the start of this derivative and poorly constructed affair. I wouldn't bother if I were you...

Money Plane stars Adam Copeland, Kelsey Grammer, Thomas Jane and Denise Richards. Grammer and Jane used to be Frasier and the Punisher. Copeland, on the other hand, remains, against all odds, The Rated R Superstar, The Ultimate Opportunist, The Master Manipulator, Edge — and while he’s none of those things in this movie, I’m going to call his character Edge anyway (I am into the whole brevity thing). Edge is a professional thief. As the movie opens, he and his team — Isabella (Katrina Norman), Trey (Patrick Lamont Jr.), and Iggy (director/co-writer Andrew Lawrence) — are in the process of stealing a Jackson Pollock valued at $40 million. The museum, if indeed a museum it be, where the painting is supposedly housed is rather strange. Edge goes through security and into a room where the painting should be, but the painting isn’t there, and neither is Edge, at least not from the van where Trey is monitoring him. Apparently someone hacked into Trey’s computer so he could see, not the live feed from the security camera, but a tape the empty room. This makes no sense. Why hack them in such a way that would make it obvious to them that they were being hacked? And the answer is that the writers needed our heroes to know someone was setting them up, and this was the best they could come up with. Edge was stealing the painting for Darius Emmanuel Grouch III (Grammer), in lieu of paying him the $40 million he owes him (since the painting’s value and the amount of the debt are the same, one must assume the other thieves were helping Edge out of the goodness of their hearts). Since Edge shows up empty-handed, Grouch offers him another job; “robbing a futuristic air casino filled with the world’s most dangerous criminals” (IMDb) — the titular money plane. We next see Edge inspecting the plane’s blueprints with his team. Where exactly did they get these blueprints? Later Edge goes home to his wife Sarah (Richards) and their young daughter — to whom he reads about Robin Hood, presumably so she grows up thinking daddy is a hero as opposed to an asshole who can’t be bothered to work for a living —; in the middle of the night, while mentally recapping what Grouch told him just a couple of scenes ago, Edge hears noises downstairs. He goes down to investigate and finds Harry (Jane). Harry is Edge’s best friend and his daughter’s godfather (the only surprise in the movie is that Harry does not end up betraying Edge), but if they’re so close, why does Harry feel the need to break in like a thief in the night, instead of, I don’t know, knocking? After all, Harry is not here to create suspense, but to provide exposition. As it turns out, Edge used to be a poker whiz until he started losing so much that his gambling debts reached the aforementioned $40 million. That’s some losing streak right there. How he still has a home and a family is anyone’s guess, as is how Edge managed to accrue such a superlative debt without having his legs broken by hired goons sooner than later. Anyway, Harry agrees to keep an eye on Edge’s family while Edge deals with the plane thing. To gain access to the plane, Edge poses as a criminal, Trey poses as Edge’s “associate,” and Katrina conveniently gets a job as a flight attendant. Now, the point of a flying casino is that, once they’re in international airspace, they can bet on anything — even on, as Grouch tells Edge, “a guy [expletive deleted] a lizard” —; you know you’re in trouble when your premise is lifted from a lesser Simpsons episode. The first game, however, is an ordinary round of Texas Hold'em. Edge wins it, excuses himself, leaves Trey playing in his place, and goes to take control of the cockpit, which he does with little difficulty and without anyone ever realizing that the plane has been taken over by a man who isn’t who he claims he is. Meanwhile, Katrina logs into the plane’s servers and Trey is challenged to a game of Russian roulette, which one would think is bad for business; after all, a dead customer can’t keep betting. Other events Trey wagers on include Man vs. Cobra, and Man vs. Piranhas. These do not take place on the plane; Trey and the other gamblers watch them remotely as they occur in some undisclosed location — presumably someplace where laws do apply. The notion of international airspace already seemed dubious to me, but this plot development makes it irrelevant. Also makes you wonder why the servers aren’t somewhere else as well. To make a dumb story short, Edge & Co. hack into the servers, transfer the cryptocurrency the criminals were using to bet to their own mobile devices, and donate it to various charitable organizations (“redistribute the wealth,” Edge says, but he’s not fooling anyone; stealing is stealing), and jump out of the plane. As for the Pollock painting, it belonged to Grouch all along; the whole thing was just a ploy to force Edge to hijack the plane. But if Edge owed Grouch $40 million, that means Grouch always had the upper hand. Instead of asking him to steal the painting, foiling the robbery, and cajoling Edge into robbing the plane, why not just tell him outright to do the plane job and be done with it? And why is there, in addition to cryptocurrency, cash on the plane? But the answer to that question I do know: to justify the title. I guess calling it The Crypto Plane would have been somewhat confusing. The biggest question, though, is what Edge, Thomas Jane, and Denise Richards are doing in this movie. I mean, I know they’re in it for the money, but I honestly think they needed the movie more than the movie needed them. I admit I saw Money Plane just for Edge; similarly, there must be people who’ll see it just for Jane or Richards — and you know what? Those people are going to be just as disappointed as I was. Edge spends almost half the film flying the plane without incident; Jane takes a break from babysitting Edge’s daughter to shoot some unnamed henchmen… with a drone, from the comfort of an easy chair in Edge’s home; and Edge could very well be a single dad for all that Richards does — I’d say she’s there to be an eye candy, but this particular candy soured a long time ago. Grammer is the exception because, while he doesn’t do much either apart from lazing around on his mansion’s terrace, he at least knows what kind of movie he’s in and how to have fun overacting, and that makes all the difference in the world.