Die Hard rip offs were all the rage in the nineties as every conceivable alternate forms of setting were thrown at us with reckless abandon. Boats, buses, trains, mountains and even Alcatraz were soon hijacked by ruthless terrorists, money hungry thieves and mad bombers and it was usually up to a charismatic underdog to save the day against an equally charismatic villain – however, the most popular location this subgenre usually found itself utilising was the aeroplane thanks to its claustrophobic nature and the fact that it’s virtually inescapable once the bloody thing is up in the air.
Movies such as Passenger 57, Executive Decision and Con Air traded in air miles for near death experiences and even Die Hard’s first sequel set up sticks in an airport for our viewing pleasure – but in 1997, Hollywood offered up possibly the most badass plane in history to get jacked: Air Force One. Sure, Die Hard on a plane sounds cool and all, but what if John McClane was played by the fucking President Of The United States? Now that’s a cinema ticket.
After taking rogue neo-Soviet dictator General Ivan Radek off the board, absurdly decent American President James Marshall alters foreign policy in order to ensure that such a man cannot get a foothold in power every again and maintains a strict “no negotiation” stance against anyone who would stand against freedom, peace and all that jazz. However, while Marshall leaves a diplomatic dinner in Moscow to head home on the titular vehicle, forces are already moving against him that aim to put his new resolve to the test as six Radek loyalists under the guise of journalists board the plane under the command of Egor Korshunov.
Once Marshall’s wife and daughter are on board, it’s wheels up for Air Force One, but not long after it gets in the air, Korshunov makes his move and in the bullet riddled chaos, he and his cohorts manage to take the plane only to have their quarry slip through their fingers as POTUS apparently gets away in the escape pod flanked by expendable secret service agents.
Only, he doesn’t. That’s right, President Marshall is so decent, he can’t possibly stand idly by while his family and staff are threatened by terrorists with their evil facial hair and so he stalks the cargo hold until he can start turning the tables on the bad guys. However, while POTUS kicks ass, back on terra firma his staff get increasingly squeamish as their leader gets his hands dirty in order to save the lives of those he loves and the jittery Defence Secretary starts lobbying Vice President Kathryn Bennett to remove Marshall’s ability to call the shots.
Can the leader of the most powerful nation on earth not only rescue his family, but hold strong to his own ideals when Korshunov tests his no negotiation policy to the limit.
I guess in this case, POTUS stands for Punch Odious Terrorists Until Success.
There’s something about a 90s action film that lands a little different as they tended to mix brazen, high concept with tangible violence that literally acts as a bridge from the ferocious flick of the 80s and the more conceptually slick movies that followed in its wake and yet I have to admit that Air Force One just doesn’t grab me as much as some of its peers from the same decade. The idea is there, of course, and you get the feeling that the germ of having a President be an action hero who gets his hands dirty probably got floated by having Bill Pullman’s commander in chief hop into a fighter jet and lead the charge on a race of invading aliens in Independence Day. “If you could do that” some bright spark probably reasoned “then why couldn’t you have POTUS go full Die Hard?” and to give Wolfgang (Das Boot) Peterson his credit, he mines the premise for everything that it’s worth. Of course, the winning hand here is – of course – having Harrison Ford play the ridiculously noble James Marshall as he’s probably the only thing about the film that isn’t distractingly gung-ho and while a lot of the movie is dedicated to a lot of frenzied (but probably understandable) flag waving, the actor dials his performance down to something far more subtler. Rather than spitting pithy one liners while suddenly becoming an engine of destruction, Ford instead infuses his first crack at a cinematic President with the integrity of a Jack Ryan with the vulnerability of a Dr. Richard Kimble – also the having the right cross of an Indiana Jones helps a lot too. For a movie that dangerously plays the majority of its outlandish premise dead straight, Ford proves to be the anchor the movie needs lest it spins off the runway completely to its fiery doom.
Also helping is Gary Oldman’s villain and while the shouty Korshunov is probably the most conventional of the varied baddies the actor portrayed throughout the decade, he’s still threatening enough to be a genuine danger and the scenes where he’s bullying Ford genuinely looks like Oldman is actually stomping him into the carpet. However, despite these two actors doing everything they can to keep the preposterousness of it all level and steady (Jerry Goldsmith’s majestic score also helps), Air Force One’s po-faced nature often works against it.
While other actioners such as True Lies, Speed, Con Air, Face/Off and The Rock all knew when to give the audience a sly wink when things where getting a bit too silly, Peterson epic forges on with a sense of patroism that so huge it almost amusingly borders on fanaticism. Maybe I just don’t get it because I’m not American, but if the supporting cast aren’t playing terrorists getting punched out by Ford, they’re made up of actors such as Glen Close, William H. Macy and Dean Stockwell who go on endlessly about how great a guy their boss is and you’ll be stunned how many people are willing to give up their life for this guy at the drop of a hat. If it happened once it would be pretty powerful, but it occurs at least four fucking times and at one point even involves a fighter pilot heroically taking a missile meant for the eponymous craft that ends up somehow being accidently hilarious.
I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on it – it is, after all an American funded movie released in July that sees the American President fucking up terrorists – and when the film eases up on the hero worship and just lets Ford do his thing, it turns up pure gold. After all, there’s not many other action movies released in the same decade that can match the sight of Ford growling “Get off my plane!” before delivering a coup de grâce, it’s just a shame that some of the 90s era visual effects can’t hope to match the scope of Peterson’s vision. In fact a further black mark on the film is a truly terrible climactic plane crash that not only ranks as some of the worst CGI of the period, but actually spoils the ending of the film a little.
With that being said, while Air Force One certainly has its issues, the sheer scale of the film mixed with its lead’s talent of playing righteous completely pitch perfect, means that even stripped of nostalgia, Air Force One is still worth saluting.
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