On New Year's Day, commercial flight Trailblazer 119 was flying its 14 passengers on a routine flight from Singapore to Tokyo. The main pilot was Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) from Scotland, while his young co-pilot was Samuel Dele (Yoson An) from Hong Kong. The plane ran into unexpected lightning storm which caused critical engine damage. Torrance made the crucial call to execute an emergency landing, which was a success.

Along with ex-military, now murder convict Gaspare (Mike Colter), Torrance decided to hike out to find a radio for help. He had figured that he had landed the plane in the Jolo group of islands, overrun by armed rebel troops that controlled the area. Not long, these rebels, led by their leader Datu Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor), held all the passengers hostage. Meanwhile, Torrance and Gaspare had to figure out a way to get out of their dangerous predicament.

Audiences are not expecting an award-winning film here, just an entertaining popcorn flick starring their reliable action star Gerard Butler. After "300" (2007) and the "Fallen" trilogy ("Olympus," "London" and "Angel"), the rest of Butler's later filmography had been peppered by grade B-action flicks from "Machine Gun Preacher" (2011) to "Last Seen Alive" (2022), all of which had the burly Butler as the tough-as-nails hero saving the day.

A major point of interest of this film for Filipino viewers was the familiar name of the island where the plane crash-landed -- Jolo (albeit pronounced with a Western twang). The Filipino bad guys were all shouting phrases in Tagalog (not Tausug). Even if he was a negative character, I felt it was a missed opportunity to cast a real Filipino actor as Datu Junmar. Evan Dane Taylor may be Fil-Am, but his crooked Tagalog was terribly unintelligible.

Aside from showing a turbulent peace and order situation in the southern Philippines to the international audience, the film practically accused the Philippine government of not only poor emergency responsiveness, but outright cowardice for allegedly refusing to engage with the rebels at all because they kept losing. To further prove the mistrust, the airline actually had to hire American mercenaries to conduct the rescue operation!

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."