Air Force One (1997)

Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen | 124 minutes | action, drama, thriller | Actors: Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews, Paul Guilfoyle, Xander Berkeley, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Tom Everett, Jürgen Prochnow, Donna Bullock, Michael Ray Miller, Carl Weintraub, Elester Latham, Elya Baskin, Levan Uchaneishvili, David Vadim, Andrew Divoff, Ilia Volokh, Chris Howell, Spencer Garrett, Bill Smitrovich, Philip Baker Hall, Albert Owens, Willard E. Pugh, Michael Monks, Alan Woolf, Messiri Freeman, Thomas Crawford, Fenton Lawless , Dan Shor, David Gianopoulos, Glenn Morshower, Richard Doyle, Don McManus

The President of the United States personally taking on a bunch of terrorists. This idea, the creators must have thought, is sure to spark a wave of patriotic feelings among American movie audiences. They will be eager to buy a ticket for this. Success assured, especially with Harrison Ford in the lead role as the bold hero cum President. It’s just a shame that in order to work out this idea, they had to come up with such a weak and unbelievable story.

Of course, it’s also almost impossible to put the President in a situation where he can deal with America’s enemies single-handedly, but screenwriter Andrew Marlowe doesn’t seem to have tried very hard to make it work. The viewer is sometimes asked a lot not to think about whether the events have any logic. How far-fetched is it that a not so young President can physically take on a group of well-trained and well-armed terrorists, especially when his own Secret Service is failing in that area? Fortunately, with Han Solo and Indiana Jones to his credit, Ford does seem somewhat credible. In addition, the viewer is made aware that the President in Vietnam won the “Medal of Honor” thirty years earlier, but apparently you never forget some things, such as cycling and taking out terrorists. Like any action movie, the hero also needs a worthy opponent. This one is delivered with sadistic pleasure by the formidable Gary Oldman as Ivan Korshunov. Born Brit Oldman doesn’t turn a blind eye to an accent and you’d almost forget he’s not Russian. He puts his role nice and bold with hysterical outbursts of anger, but is a great movie villain. It is thanks to Ford and Oldman that ‘Air Force One’ remains somewhat palatable. Meanwhile, in Washington DC, key advisers, ministers and generals, are meeting under the leadership of female Vice President Kathryn Bennett. She is played powerfully by Glenn Close, who gets to hear the most worn-out clichés around her. These supporting actors, all well-known faces from TV and film, are all caricatured.

From the fire-breathing General Northwood (Bill Smitrovich) to the Secretary of Defense (Dean Stockwell), they are basically people’s templates and you can blindly predict how they’ll react. Director Petersen also seems less on track in these scenes than in the scenes that take place in the interior of Air Force One. His camera effortlessly follows Ford through the aisles, cargo areas and compartments of the plane. He does not manage to reproduce the intense tension of his masterpiece ‘Das Boot’, but the action scenes are adequately done. Unfortunately, bombastic music by Jerry Goldsmith is used here, which quickly starts to cause irritation. The highlight of the action is the nerve-racking go-around that the aircraft makes at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. The confrontations between Korshunov and the frightened passengers are also very exciting because of Oldman’s intensity.

In the last part of the film, the action and tension are ramped up even more. Here too, unfortunately, it is at the expense of all credibility, with a ridiculous stunt (with mediocre special effects by today’s standards) at the loading flap of the plane. Although the film has three strong lead roles and the action is visually and technically well put together, ‘Air Force One’ is actually lost in advance because of the far-fetched scenario.