Good old Air Force One. Take Die Hard and mix it with a aircraft hijacking movie and what have you got? Er, well Passenger 57 obviously. But then if you make the solitary hero working alone to save the hostages the President of the U.S. of A himself...and then cast Harrison Ford as the President and you've got the ingredients for some, patriotic, big-budget badassery.
The characters and the dialogue might be under-written, and director Wolfgang Peterson might not be able to capture the spirit of jingoistic American flag-waving bollocks as brilliantly as the master Michael Bay...but it gets the job done with enough heart, tension and scenery chewing (from the excellent Glenn Close, Xander Berkley, Dean Stockwell and certified baddie genius Gary Oldman) to give you over two hours of breathless popcorn bullshit.
The script, in terms of pacing, situations and action set-pieces is a major plus, as is the classic Goldsmith score and Ford's casting as the conflicted yet determined Commander In Chief. About 80% of the effects work is fine, but is under-mined by a handful of rudimentary CGI aircraft shots that look like they were computer modelled by an 8 year old. But this isn't a film to nitpick. Just soak up the corny lines, the the cunning escapes of Mr Ford, the craziness of Mr Oldman and soak up that bullshit.
1 comment:
Meh. I never did care much for Air Force One even though Gary Oldman is on good form as the naughty Ruskie. Problem is it's a Wolfgang Peterson film - he of The Perfect Storm, Troy and Poseidon. And arguably the last properly good film ol' Wolfy made was In The Line Of Fire back in 1993. Once a director of note with the likes of Das Boot, Wolfy quickly became a shallow Hollywood hack. Sad really.
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