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Air Force One

1997, Movie, R, 118 mins

Air Force One: Review

AIR FORCE ONE
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What if a kamikaze terrorist (Gary Oldman) seized Air Force One -- a military base, communications center and mobile seat of government all crammed into one sleek, bulletproof, nuclear-shock-resistant package -- with President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), his family (Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews) and a healthy cross section of his cabinet and political advisers on board? The movie gets off to a bracing start, with a ruthless gang of commandos parachuting onto the roof of a foreign presidential palace and systematically slaughtering everyone who stands between them and the sleeping man (Jurgen Prochnow, DAS BOOT's sympathetic Nazi) they brutally drag out of bed and into a waiting helicopter. The twist: The midnight assassins are our boys, their mission a joint US-Russian initiative, and their victim genocidal dictator General Radek. In the aftermath of the successful raid, Pres. Marshall's new, get-tough on terrorists policy takes on a very personal meaning, as he and his family become bargaining chips in the hands of Radek's fanatical supporters. Wolfgang Petersen clearly wants to distinguish his plane-in-peril thriller from the likes of the vulgar, cartoonish CON AIR and the gleefully shlocky TURBULENCE and succeeds, actively avoiding the rapid-fire editing, wall-to-wall explosions and fetishistic shots of guns and unnaturally muscled flesh that are the adolescent clichés of big-budget action movies. He deliberately drains much of the life from the action sequences; it's hard to remember the last time mayhem was so joyless. Unfortunately, the character-based pyrotechnics aren't quite complex enough to replace the missing fireballs. Idealistic terrorist Oldman is, for him, relatively restrained; Ford fairly oozes tortured righteousness, but spends too much of the picture playing Rambo in a suit, because let's face it: Action audiences aren't going to get behind a guy who bails out at the first sign of trouble, even if that's exactly what he's supposed to do. Trapped uncomfortably between its higher aspirations and the demands of genre, this picture never quite gets its bearings, but it's still a solid ride. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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