AIR AMERICA
A film review by Jonathan Knight
Copyright 1991 Jonathan Knight
AIR AMERICA is a wonderful movie which actually has the distinction of making me laugh out loud in the cinema.
I went to see AIR AMERICA having seen the trailer and thought it might be a little light relief on a Friday evening. The movie is based in Laos while Tricky Dicky (President Nixon) was telling the whole world that the US government was not in Laos. Of course this sounds slightly odd as we can see a vast collection of aircraft and government troops exactly where they're not supposed to be.
The government is in fact in Laos, but employing a collection of civilian pilots to fly supplies to the army the US would like to win the war. As a sideline the US major is running a heroin factory and using the pilots to fly the opium around.
This then gives a nice set of interactions that the film uses for both comic effect and also to serious and emotional effect which the film just about brings off. The dialogue is cleverly written and has some beautiful lines which are extremely funny.
Characters other than the two main ones are not explored, then tend to be there for contrast and provide the setting for the scene. The story is enough to make the film move along at the right pace and it is easy to follow what's going on and why (good news for Friday evening).
I saw it on a wide screen with Surroundsound which is well used.
I really enjoyed this movie, it fitted in exactly with what I wanted to see. It is far more funny than the trailer would lead you to believe.
-- JANET :jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs Jonathan Knight, BITNET:jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@ukacrl Department of Computer Science other :jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk University of Keele, Keele, UUCP :...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan Staffordshire. ST5 5BG. U.K. .
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