Air Force One (1997)

reviewed by
Justin K. Siegel


AIR FORCE ONE -- a movie review by Justin Siegel

Harrison Ford is the president of the United States.

No really, Harrison Ford _is_ the president of the United States. If I were an American citizen and was of legal age and woke before noon one day, I'd vote for him. He's my hero, man. I mean, when he's up there battling terrorists, being a family-man and fighting tooth-decay, I don't worry about him. He'll be A-Okay! If it were Bill Clinton up there, then I'd be scared, but come on, this is Harrison Ford. They should've handed out little buttons that say "Vote for Harrison Ford this July!" after the movie.

Ford is one of the many good things AIR FORCE ONE (or AFO to those who are too cool for their own good) has going for it. Others are Glenn Close, William H. Macy (the guy from FARGO), director Wolfgang Petersen, and a great script. One thing going against it is the impausability-factor. While it's not as high as that of FACE/OFF, where two men swap faces, it's easily as high as CON AIR, in which a handful of prisoners highjack an airplane.

What is it with all the implauable movies this summer?

After giving an emotional speech about how the USA will not negotiate with terrorists and locking up some sort of Russian comrade, President Harrison Ford heads back to Air Force One in a limo, looking forward to watching a football game and spending some time with his acting-impared 12-year-old daughter.

Not so easy, because this time, loyallist to the aformentioned Russian comrade Gary Oldman has, with the help of someone who is supposed to be on President Ford's side, hijacked Air Force One. He will kill one hostage (there are like, 50, including the first lady, first daughter, and first monkey) every half-hour until the Russian comrade that they locked up is released.

Silly Russian. Didn't anyone ever tell him not to mess with Harrison Ford?

President Bill Clinton has said he's seen this film twice. _Twice_. This is the busiest, most powerful man in the world and he's seen this film _twice_. Then he goes home and has a nice long jacuzi. It's funny -- I can just imagine him swinging from a cable dangling from a diving plane. He's lucky he let Harrison Ford do that for him.

        B+ (report card)         8 (out of 10)                *** ½ (0 to ****)

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews