Air Force One (1997)

God bless those United States. The old red, white and blue. The stars and stripes, the most powerful country in the whole wide world!! Murica!

So once upon a time, a long, long time ago, an action movie was made by director John McTiernan and starred a young Bruce Willis. This movie centred around the hijacking of an American skyscraper by a highly efficient group of terrorists. Only one thing stood in their way, a single lone blue-collar cop in a vest.

That movie was the classic 1988 action thriller 'Die Hard', probably the best action movie ever made and the movie that launched an entire genre. Ever since that day, we have seen many many movies that copied the basic premise. This genre became known as 'Die Hard on a plane or train or boat' etc...

Anyway, this movie is essentially another variant of that classic genre and comes under 'Die Hard on a plane'. The only twist in this tale is the fact that the lone hero is the President of the United States. Other than that, this is pretty much your standard terrorist-hijack setup, with all the regular ingredients you might expect. Take 'Passenger 57 ', 'Die Hard', and 'Executive Decision ', throw them in a blender and voila!

This film does well mainly down to the huge appeal of Harrison Ford as the President. Think along the lines of Indiana Jones fighting Russian terrorists, on Air Force One, in the 90's, and you can't go wrong can you? His rugged looks, manly voice, and likeable charisma (even without the fedora) are the stuff of silver screen legend.

The other reason this works so well is Gary Oldman as the main Russian baddie. He's got the stereotypical goatee, a heavy accent, and he's really mean. Another good Eurotrash villain. Along with Ford, that's two rock-solid performances which keep the film glued together. Without them (with lower-tier action stars), this could have easily been a very average run-of-the-mill action thriller.

Looking back, the casting in this movie is pretty extensive. There are lots of familiar faces for all the White House staff, both on and off the plane, such as Dean Stockwell, Glenn Close, and William H. Macy. Andrew Divoff is one of the Russian bad guys. Jürgen Prochnow is typecast as your stereotypical Eastern European-looking bad guy. And Xander Berkeley is the stupiest undercover terrorist ever, as he has a chance at the end to carry on in his role and not get discovered cos all the bad guys have been killed. Instead, he makes the stupid choice and gets killed.

The movie interestingly gives you a glimpse into the interior of Air Force One which, at the time, was unique (before the internet). I never realised how luxurious the interior of the plane is, from top to bottom, it's like a long narrow mansion. On top of that, you also learn a few things about the plane. Is there really an escape pod on board?

The sets for Air Force One all look top-notch, and the action is also darn good, but admittedly, it's also pretty daft at times. Lots of gunfire in mid air, inside the plane, kinda silly as you'd think at least one might pierce the fuselage, especially with all the machine gun fire, geez! The obligatory faceless Russian goons, were small in number but many still managed to get killed (magical gun fodder?). The same can be said for Air Force One personnel. People getting mowed down all over the shop, lots of faceless gun fodder. Seemed like the plane was packed.

Watching this now, it does feel heavily dated and not really as slick as it appeared back in the day. For starters, the effects are terrible. Awful looking CGI and greenscreen throughout, laughable in fact. The less said about the big finale the better. How on earth such shoddy CGI was allowed for that plane crash, I'll never know. It looked bad even back then. Basically, everything on the plane looks realistic; everything outside the plane, including fighter jets, looks hokey.

It is of course, highly ludicrous that this would ever happen, or that any President of the United States could actually do something like this. But of course we already know that, suspension of disbelief.

End of the day, it's your typical action flick, cunningly disguised as something a bit more intelligent (or at least trying to be). Far from it, this really is a very standard action movie which makes me wonder how they managed to get such a stellar cast. You could literally have cast anyone in these roles, and it would still be the same outcome (average). A better and similar action movie to watch would be Wesley Snipes in 'Passenger 57' truth be told. 

'nobody does this to the United States'


5.5/10