Money Plane (2020)

I almost started this post by saying that the pandemic changed the lives of many people. And that was true for a time. Things got shut down. People couldn’t see each other. There were even a few months, where professional sports weren’t a thing. It felt like the end of days. This isn’t even the big one. This is just a drop of water. There’s probably a bigger pandemic around the corner. The flood will come. We all know how that will turn out.

People couldn’t handle the pandemic. They needed normalcy. New Zealand worked hard to stamp out any cases of Covid-19, leading to their reopening and returning to a somewhat normal lifestyle. As far as I know, at least. Other countries didn’t do as well. Here in Canada, it seemed like things were going well at the beginning. Ontario locked down early, allowing the number of infected to lower to a point that would be easier to trace. But then things started reopening. The reopening was mismanaged. We went less than a year later and haven’t really come out of it. Restaurants have hovered between being open for indoor dining or open only for take-out and delivery. That’s not even the worst of it.

The United States barely locked down. Certain areas locked down, for sure. New York and Los Angeles saw major shutdowns with stay-at-home orders in place. Yet places like Florida were open for business nearly the whole way through. Many people didn’t care about being sick. They didn’t care about protecting others. They refused to abide by any lockdown rules, insisting that they live their lives the same way they always did. It allowed the Covid-19 virus to run rampant, leading the United States to become one of the worst hit countries in the world.

Aside from a large chunk of white people saying that their rights were being taken away because they had to wear masks (even though anyone that wasn’t white was being murdered in the streets by police and angry white men, many of which were the anti-mask protestors), there was one other main reason that things were open. The United States is a capitalist country. Money means more than lives. They needed things to be open so that the rich could become richer and the economy could thrive. Thus, the movie business kept on chugging along. I knew I’d get to movies at some point.

Hollywood had to adjust in some major ways when the pandemic began. Large gatherings were frowned upon, which led to many theaters closing their doors for an extended time. When they reopened, it was tough for the theaters to find audiences for the movies they played. It was a mixture of public fear of the virus (from those who weren’t careless), restrictions on how many people could be in an enclosed space like a screening room, and a lack of new movies coming out. See, without the audience, it was tough for a studio to justify releasing a big budget movie theatrically. They wouldn’t make their money back. Warner Brothers tried with Tenet, but there wasn’t much of an audience for the movie in the cinemas. Drive-in theaters, sure. But a standard cinema? It wasn’t the right time for people to return.

One place where movies thrived, however, was video-on-demand. Streaming services and pay-per-view saw a big rise in viewership during the pandemic. People were home more often because there wasn’t as much to do outside the house. Studios saw this happening and released some of their movies to streaming services. See the movie at home because theaters were closed. Trolls: World Tour was the first. Or it was the first major movie to do that because of the pandemic. Then came Artemis Fowl. Disney kept going after Artemis Fowl with Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon. Warner Brothers released Wonder Woman 1984 to HBO Go, before announcing that their entire 2021 slate would go to HBO Go. Studios were making big moves to get their movies seen.

The theatrically designed movies were the big splashes in the video-on-demand world throughout the pandemic, but they weren’t the only releases. There were still movies made with video-on-demand in mind that came out over the course of the various lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. The movies that would typically go direct-to-video or right onto a streaming service still did that. And few got the same sort of notoriety as Money Plane.

Jack Reese (Adam Copeland, aka Edge) was a former military captain and gambling addict whose gambling debt had been bought out by Darius Emmanuel Grouch III (Kelsey Grammer), a criminal who nicknamed himself “The Rumble.” He was tasked by The Rumble to rob the money plane, a plane filled with some of the world’s worst criminals, who were gambling on people’s lives. Jack got his team of Isabella (Katrina Norman), Trey (Patrick Lamont Jr.), and Iggy (Andrew Lawrence) together to steal the cryptocurrency and cash from the flying bad-guy casino.

Money Plane was filmed prior to the Covid-19 became a worldwide pandemic. The production was completed before the world was sent into various states of lockdown.  And it very much would have flown under the radar, no pun intended, if Covid-19 hadn’t shut things down. The big budget, blockbuster films would have continued coming out and Money Plane would have been a simple blip on the radar. It wasn’t meant to be, however. The density of movies thinned out, allowing the smaller ones to float to the top and step into the spotlight.

One of those smaller movies was Money Plane, and the smaller nature of it was obvious from the get-go. There were some stars in the movie, but they were all stars from years before, now in the twilight of their careers. Kelsey Grammer took on the role of The Rumble, having played Frasier for twenty years from the 1980s through the 2000s. Adam Copeland had been huge in WWE during the 2000s, and was only just making a comeback after a long, nearly career-ending injury. Denise Richards hadn’t been much of a movie thing since the early 2000s, and Thomas Jane’s career included only a few semi-memorable supporting turns since he was the lead in HBO’s Hung nearly a decade ago. Plus, there were Joey, Matthew, and Andrew Lawrence. They were huge in the 1990s but had mostly disappeared from the public’s consciousness since. That was the level of movie star that Money Plane brought to the table.

The other thing that made Money Plane feel small was the setting. There were four primary locations in which the movie took place. One was the plane. The other three were indistinct warehouses, a cabin-looking house, and Kelsey Grammer’s back yard. I say Kelsey Grammer’s back yard because they never went inside the house. It seemed like they hired him, and he agreed to it as long as he could film at home without redecorating. So back yard it was. That’s my theory, at least.

The plane was just as big an issue in how low-budget the movie felt. The idea of having a casino on a plane sparked thoughts of extravagance and excess. However, every scene set on the plane looked like it involved the smallest possible casino floor. There was one cards table, which doubled as the location for a game of Russian roulette. There was a lounge area that looked more like the back of a limousine than an airplane. The length of the plane seemed long, from the number of curtains and corridors the characters disappeared into. But every compartment for the gambling within this high-roller criminal casino was tight quarters. It lost that extravagant feel that a casino should have. This was because they were filming while building sets and only had some sections of the set completed at a time, thus forcing them to shoot into whatever corners were built. It gave off a cheap feeling, which worked against the concept of the film.

In a normal world, this movie would have come out and been forgotten in a sea of other bigger, better made movies. Money Plane didn’t get that world. Money Plane got the pandemic world. Fewer movies were being released. Studios were pushing back their theatrical releases, and other productions were being halted. It led to a barren new release landscape and people took notice of anything that came out. They took notice of Money Plane because it was one of the few new movies.

People noticed the many flaws that Money Plane had. But they also noticed what it did well. Kelsey Grammer, as much as it felt like he wanted to film at home, turned in a fun performance. He took the role because he thought it would be fun to play the over-the-top villain. And he put all that energy into his performance. The way The Rumble tried to build rapport with Jack Reese over video chat was filled with Grammer playing around with the vile character. The way he yelled at his henchman oozed with scenery being chewed. He was having a blast and easily became the most memorable part of Money Plane.

Another highlight was the action performed by Katrina Norman. Not all the action in Money Plane was good. The cockpit fight between Jack Reese and one of the pilots was underwhelming, to say the least. It was two giant guys in very tight quarters. There wasn’t enough space for them to do any actual moves. They basically grappled for a few minutes while pushing each other into things. Any action scene involving Katrina Norman, on the other hand, had elements of fun to it. She was the small woman taking on bigger men. She had some moves that needed to be finessed to win the fights. Using her sexuality against one guy, using a bottle against another. They were fun fights that broke up the monotony of boring action throughout the rest of the movie.

Then there was Trey, the comic relief of Money Plane. Trey got wrapped up in the gambling. And he kept fumbling his way into winning the bets. When he first sat down, he was forced into a game of Russian roulette. Luckily, his opponent took the gun and pulled the trigger first. It was the kill shot. Trey survived. Then he stumbled into a bet he didn’t know much about. He was asked to choose a number. He chose seventeen. A man fought a snake for sixteen minutes before dying, and Trey ended up being closest. There was another bet about how much money it would take for a guy to maim his friend. Trey got closest to that, too. He was on a hot streak of illegal gambling wins.

The other thing about Trey that worked comedically was the alias he used. Each of the three thieves who boarded the money plane took on an alias. Jack Reese took on the persona of a human trafficker. Isabella became one of the flight attendants. Trey became a man named Mr. McGillicutty. This was a name that did not suit Trey’s look at all. It was an Irish name. He was a Black American. Those two didn’t work together. It threw a few different characters for a loop. The name was repeated throughout Money Plane and never lost its humour.

Money Plane was noticed for its positive aspects but was mostly recognized for its faults. It was a movie destined to go direct-to-video because it was made quickly on the cheap. It never stood a chance of being some form of high quality story-telling. That was never in the cards. And, any other year, it would have breezed right past audiences without too many eyes being turned to it. 2020 was a different year.

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the world in many ways. It forced people to stay home to stay safe. It shut down many businesses that weren’t essential. Restaurants were hit hard, as were small local businesses that catered to people who were out and about. Some of them would never reopen. They would be lost forever, and the people who ran them would be in financial ruin. It wasn’t a great time to have a small business.

Hollywood was hit hard, too. The entire system changed to accommodate the disease that was tearing through the world’s population. Productions were put on hold until proper safety measures were in place. Theaters were closed because it was tough to have a bunch of people in a cramped space like stadium seating cinema screens. Tentpole blockbusters had their releases pushed back because of the lack of theaters open and the lack of customers when the theaters finally did open again. Everything changed.

One thing that didn’t change was the video-on-demand and streaming markets. Okay, they changed somewhat. More eyes were on these entertainment sources because other options had been taken away. Streaming services began testing out premier status films, namely Disney+, where theatrical movies showed up on the service for an added price. For a certain time, at least. Mulan was a few months of premier pricing before it went to regular streaming on the service. The closure of theaters created some innovations within the streaming and video-on-demand markets.

The extra eyes on these outlets also meant that more people were noticing the movies being released. There weren’t nearly as many big, theatrical tentpoles being released, so people took note of the other movies that were still coming out on schedule. The good, the bad, and everything in between. Money Plane was one of many movies that got added recognition due to the pandemic. It gained a following, a legacy. In another world, a Covid-19-less world, that wouldn’t be the case. But this is the world we live in. This is the world we have.

Now for some notes:

• Money Plane featured Al Sapienza. He was previously seen in Godzilla (week 282) and Road to Revenge (week 313).
• Edgar Leza was in both Money Plane and Freelancers (week 14).
• Donald DeNoyer returned from Breakin’ (week 350) to be in Money Plane.
• Andrew Lawrence was the director of Money Plane. He was also in the movie, as well as Sniper 3 (week 430).
• Finally, Denise Richards had a small role in Money Plane. She was in Tammy and the T-Rex (week 408) as well.
• Have you seen Money Plane? Did you like it or not? Was it good or bad? How do you feel about the pandemic film landscape? Share your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments.
• If there are any movies that you think I should be checking out for future weeks of Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know about them. Find me on Twitter or in the comments and tell me what I should be watching. I like getting suggestions.
• As always, head on over to Instagram for more Sunday “Bad”Movies fun.
• And, to finish things off, a look forward. The next movie on the schedule takes me back into the 1980s sex comedy arena. This time, the main character gets telekinetic powers. He is played by Scott Baio. Yes, that’s right. I’ll be checking out Zapped! for next week’s post. I hope to see you then.