The Scottish actor is one of the biggest action stars in all of Hollywood
If there’s a situation that needs solved, Butler is your man(Image: Warner Brothers)
A rare Gerard Butler film that critics and audiences both loved is airing on TV tonight (Wednesday, June 9) for free across the UK.
It’s been a successful summer for the Scottish actor, who can currently be found in cinemas in DreamWorks’ live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon.
Playing Stoick the Vast, Butler has brought to life the same character that he voiced across the original three animated films.
Already grossing $519 million around the world in under a month, the remake has already managed to out-gross the original.
The film’s success marks another highpoint in Butler’s career, with the actor one of the biggest Hollywood stars to emerge from these shores.
Studying law in his early years, Butler made the career U-turn into movies in the 1990s, appearing in Mrs Brown and James Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies.
Once 300 made him a household name, Butler would go on to appear in a string of action hits, including the Has Fallen trilogy, Law Abiding Citizen and Geostorm.
Gerard Butler and Mike Colter in Plane(Image: Warner Brothers)
It’s fair to say that critics haven’t always been on Butler’s side, with the majority of his films being harshly undervalued.
Real Butler fans have known for years that the magic of his movies is that they allow you to escape from your worries for a few hours and experience thrills.
A film that best represents this is his 2023 Plane, which as you may have guessed sees him on a plane for much of the runtime.
Jokes aside, Butler’s commercial pilot has to join forces with Mike Colter’s suspected murderer to save his passengers from a hostile territory after an emergency landing.
There’s not much more to it, you have your heroes, your villains and a movie titled so plain (no pun intended) it’s actually genius.
Released in the dreaded January window, Plane managed to gross an impressive $74.5 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.
While fans of the actor were up for another adventure, critics actually gave it a respectable score of 78% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Its consensus reads: “Plane charts a standard action-adventure course with its cruising altitude just a few miles above Direct-to-Video – but with Gerard Butler in the cockpit, thriller enthusiasts may still find this a fairly fun flight.”
A sequel was confirmed in February 2023 focusing on Colter’s character Louis Gaspare, with a cameo from the main man himself likely to happen.
Plane airs on Wednesday, July 9, on Film 4 and channel4.com