- Title: Money Plane
- IMDb: link
“You want to bet on a dude fucking an alligator? Money Plane!”
Money Plane is your typical B-movie action flick about thieves forced to take an impossible job. After the movie’s opening heist goes bad, their backer (Kelsey Grammer) pushes the group into robbing a casino plane full of criminals wagering on anything dumb and/or repulsive. Led by Adam “Edge” Copeland, the team consists of Katrina Norman, Patrick Lamont Jr., and Andrew Lawrence with Thomas Jane as back-up. The modest budget and odd plot twists (some of which make absolutely no sense) are, I guess, to be expected from a movie called Money Plane.
When low-budget films work it’s often on the charisma of its cast or the cleverness of its plot helping to overcome other deficiencies. Sadly, the cast gets no help from the screenplay. Some of the casting works. WWE Superstar Edge does all right for himself in the starring role, and his size is an advantage to several scenes (including the close-quarters fight inside of the plane’s cockpit). I also enjoyed Norman as the team’s resident ass-kicker. And Grammer is obviously enjoying himself playing the film’s heavy. Sadly, the rest of the cast is mostly forgettable.
Money Plane knows what it is, and at 82 minutes the film doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. That’s more than I can say of many blockbusters. The film from, directed by, and starring the Lawrence brothers in various roles, is a cheap action flick with plot, character and pacing issues that at times still manages a bit of B-movie charm despite the deficiencies it is working with. Much of plot, starting with the ridiculous idea of the plane in the first place, is awkward, almost none of the twists (or the amazing number of faceless soldiers featured in the film’s third act) make sense, and the heist itself is lackluster compared to what fans of the genre are used to. It’s far from a good film, and isn’t quite cheesy enough to make it a guilty pleasure, but for a straight-to-video release starring a professional wrestler it’s also not the complete trainwreck I was expecting.