Wedged in between Passenger 57 (1992) and Air Force One (1998) in the modern hijack thriller stakes was a modest little effort from producer Joel Silver called Executive Decision. As usual it was the same old shit with terrorists (reliable movie Muslim/Arab extremists)having hijacked a passenger jet en-route to the States...this time with some potent and lethal nerve agent on board. Instead of the sole, under-equipped and out-gunned hero Silver opted for a much more realistic scenario of a trained team of soldiers sneaking on board to take out the baddies....except he realised that the concept had become a little bit too run-of-the-mill. So Silver gets his elite SEAL team on board in a daring mid-air and covert transfer from one plane to another. Can you smell it?
Just like Air Force One, Executive Decision's director is a hack so it's a solid effort that's greatly aided by a tight, tension filled script and a great cast from Kurt Russell as the man-out-of-his-depth, Halle Berry as the hot stewardess, Davis Suchet (back on Arab fundamentalist duties after Iron Eagle), Oliver Platt, John Leguizamo and J.T.Walsh. A great touch is the casting of Steven Seagal, set up as the unbeatable military leader of the good guys, before being offed withing the first action set-piece of the mission. This might be familiar, by-the-numbers film-making, but it's rather tense by-the-numbers film-making which means there's still life in the old girl yet.
1 comment:
Haven't seen this one for years and don't remember that much about it save for the Seagal death. Nowadays he's such a porker they'd never even get that stealth fighter off of the ground.
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