Air Force One

Teresa surprised me with this one.  She saw a trailer for a network TV version of it and decided she wanted to see it so she got on line and put it on the top of the Netflix queue.  She never does that, she always tells me to do it.  AND she picked an action flick and not a chick flick.  I had seen bits and parts of the movie but I never actually sat through the whole thing.  I don’t put movies I’ve already seen up here on the page.  If I did you guys would be reading about “Full Metal Jacket” and “Goodfellas” about once a week…  Anyway, after watching the whole movie, I guess I actually only saw a few minutes of it, maybe only the trailers.

I don’t remember why I never saw this one.  Maybe because it was supposed to be a big blockbuster hit and all but I never saw it.  US and Russian forces capture a dangerous rogue General and put him in prison.  A crew of Russian loyalists are really upset about it so they kill a TV crew and using their credentials, gain access to Air Force One.  With the help of a Secret Service Agent-gone-bad, they take the plane.  The Presidential escape pod is jettisoned but the President stayed hidden on board AF1.  Washington is working on negotiations with the hijackers to release the captured General and the President is trying every way possible to take back the plane or get it on the ground.

As a side note; I always thought it was a little unnerving when we are coming in for a landing and the captain/stewardess says, “We’ll be on the ground in five minutes.”  Why not, “We’ll be landing in five minutes”?  If we run out of fuel or crash or roll over on the tarmac, we’ll still be ON THE GROUND.

Ok, back to the movie…  Eventually, after a lot of action and dramatics, the President is captured.  The bad guy is pointing a gun at his wife and daughter forcing him to make the call to release the General.  He does and after a few minutes, he manages to escape and kill the bad guy.  He runs back upstairs and calls in to cancel the General’s release.  The day is saved!  Until… the rogue nation sends up fighter planes and AF1 is damaged in the fight.  The plane is deemed “un-landable” and everyone on board is doomed.  They come up with a way to get everyone off the plane by installing a tether between another transport plane and AF1, sliding everyone across on harnesses.  There is a final show down with the bad Secret Service agent and the President is finally reeled in as AF1 hits the water with the bad guy still on board.

The special effects of the plane hitting the water were interesting.  I wonder what I would have thought of them when the movie came out and they were cutting edge.  They weren’t bad so much as they were old.  They serve as a great timestamp on movie effects showing, “That’s the best we could do back in 1997″

I thought the scene where he caves in to the demands because of his family was wrong.  As a father, I can sympathize how difficult it must have been to see a gun to his wife’s head with his daughter six inches away knowing she’s next. But as President, he can’t make those decisions based on emotion.  This is why the First Family has Secret Service agents assigned to them, we know they are targets and we know they can be used as pawns to blackmail the President.  He has to rise above it, just like he did when they executed the other two or three people to draw him out.  He didn’t give in because he knew they were dead anyway, the only way out was to not give in.  But now that it’s his family he caves in?  He can’t.  Would I?  Not in that situation I wouldn’t.  Sitting there watching it with Teresa we talked about what we would do and we both came up with the same answer; there’s nothing you CAN do.  You have no choice in that situation and you can’t give in.  Even if they kill us all.

I thought of a great way out of the situation but I don’t know if it would work.  What if he made the call, had Washington on the line of course, and just before he made the command, quit?  Relinquish all duties of the Presidency, giving command over to the Vice President.  Or maybe he wouldn’t have to quit, just identify himself as under duress and incapacitated.  Either way, he has no power, no authority to get the General released.  Holding him or his family hostage gets them nothing.  Ok, so it’s technically a way out but it would probably get you killed.

Harrison Ford as the President is almost believable until he smiles.  No politician has a smile like that.  It was Indiana Jones as President.  Not because he couldn’t act the part, in fact I thought he played it well in his “Jack Ryan” style.  The problem is in my own head.  Every time he flashed that smart-assed smile I just expected him to pull out a bullwhip or something.  Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?  See, maybe I have something here…”Indiana Jones” on “Air Force One” turns out to be “Snakes on a Plane”?  Ok, No.

Gary Oldman is one of my favorites.  I liked him in a lot of movies and I like the way he plays a lot of different characters so believably.  That being said, I didn’t like him in this one.  Maybe it was the ‘over the top’ Russian accent, maybe it was his explosive temper that was always too short-lived or maybe it was that I saw this movie 9 years too late and the idea of a Russian bad-guy wanting to reunite Mother Russia is just not believable any more.  I don’t know but either way, Oldman’s baddie was a weak link.

I thought it was a decent movie.  It gave me goose bumps at the action scenes and brought a tear to my eye when they were going to kill his daughter.  I thought it may have run on a little too long, too many twists and turns with one crisis after another but I’d probably bitch that it was too simple if it didn’t.  Not bad, I liked it but I’ll never own it on DVD.