Money Plane (2020)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) There’s clearly something wrong with me, because I found Money Plane rather enjoyable despite its significant shortcomings. It’s useless to pretend that it’s anything other than a low-budget action/thriller film. From the opening moments, the cinematography, the actors, and the pacing are all clearly inferior to Hollywood’s quality. And yet… it has a canny goofiness that makes it fun to watch. A regrettably-coiffed Adam Copeland (a wrestler, now a thespian) stars as the leader of a band of professional thieves whose latest and greatest heist falls flat, forcing them to an even grander scheme to rob an airborne casino travelling in international space and catering to the scruple-less ultra-rich. Kelsey Grammer cackles madly as the businessman funding the endeavour (and, eventually, waving a machine gun around), while Denise Richards shows up briefly, but long enough to make us wonder what happened to her. The airborne casino thing doesn’t make a shred of sense, but who cares—at its best (which is admittedly still a low bar), Money Plane glides on chutzpah and insouciance: everyone involved in the film knows they’re not there for high art, and that the ridiculousness is the point. It’s actually able to conjure a few set-pieces out of simple dialogue—many of the scenes set aboard the casino-in the-sky are like that: more words than budget, but they create an atmosphere. Of course, the good bits of Money Plane are brought down by its not-so-good bits, odd moments where the structure goes wonky (practicality in the face of low budgets is usually to blame), substandard special effects or suddenly-bland dialogue. Still, I got a lot more out of Money Plane than I expected—in fact, more than many other so-called respectable movies seen lately. Sometimes that happens: movies happen to hit you at just the right angle, making them feel better than they are.