For details of my reviewing style, please see the note at the end of the review.
AIR FORCE ONE
Rating: 7.0 and $7.00
AFO held my attention consistently throughout. In fact, several times I found myself gasping for air as I got caught up in the action. This is a (perhaps surprisingly) solid action flick during a fairly sluggish summer.
Harrison Ford is great. You believe, for every second, that he really is the President. He not only displays bravery and courage, but also a human side we sometimes forget our leaders have. Almost completely absent from this movie, unlike certain others in his past, were the moments when he would try to pretend that he was frightened, but instead just looked confused and lost. In AFO, you actually believe he is scared turdless.
Gary Oldman is a very convincing terrorist. The radicalism he conveyed made me, in some instances, so scared I was nervous and fidgety. His character is the kind of guy you are afraid could be a real terrorist: nutty, but intelligent and focused.
Now come the parts where I complain. Glenn Close is a horrible Vice-President. Through the whole movie she looked old and tired, like she couldn't wait to run off the set and jump into the jacuzzi. I was very, very glad when her short bits were over and we could get back to the crisis at hand.
Liesel Matthews was similarly a horrible First Brat. She displayed very limited acting capabilities. During every scene where she was called upon to display a serious emotion, it always seemed like she was reading the lines from a paper and grinning. I didn't believe she was scared. I believed, instead, that she was excited by the terrorists threatening to kill her. Either that or she was too airheaded to understand what was happening around her. (A replacement that immediately comes to mind would have been Hillary Wolf, but I guess she's a little old now to play a 12 year old.)
Ignoring these two lame performances, this film is thoroughly enjoyable and suspenseful, so you should see it.
I give two ratings: An arbitrary scale of enjoyability (1 to 10) and a maximum price I would pay to see the movie.
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