Rented (on iTunes) the new high concept heist flick Money Plane. Despite the similarity in titles, not a sequel to Money Train. Also, despite the similarities to other heist films, a far cry from anything you might consider smart, sly, or coool.
Money Plane is about a team of criminals blackmailed (by evil Kelsey Grammer) into robbing The Money Plane: an airplane that hosts the worst-of-the-worst criminals who want to gamble on human lives while flying through international airspace. The plane has billions in crypto-currency and millions in paper currency so its a juicy target if they can manage to get onboa… oh, no, that part was easy. They get on board no problem…
And that’s one angle of a practical dodecahedron of problems with this dimwitted and cheap movie. It has this concept and conceit that it’s going to be Ocean’s 11 on a high-rollers aircraft or have the suspenseful gambling of Casino Royale… but it doesn’t understand the snappy cool needed for a heist film nor the ability to stage a suspense scene… or a competent action scene for that matter.
And this movie is deeply low budget. No crime if you can make your slim budget work but this movie simply couldn’t. I suspect it’s set aboard a remarkably small jetliner because that allowed them to save on set decoration (an airplane’s fuselage needn’t be large or extravagant compared to an actual casino). But it’s more than just the compressed environment… there were constant reminders how few resources they had, the least of which was apparently not hiring actors or stunt people who could do fight scenes… or possibly even a fight choreographer of any kind.
Every ounce of his film oozed wannabe and try-hard… it so wanted to fly above its budget and present the slick, smart, cool factor the best heist movies live by. But it was all a dismal failure on every front.
No point in wasting money on this movie. There are better heist movies out there. It can’t survive its budgetary constraints and it can’t survive a dim bulb script and aspirations for something they couldn’t live up to. Skip.
Score: 56