Air Force One

National Review, Sept 1, 1997 by John Simon

WOLFGANG Petersen, best remembered for Das Boot, has come up with another thriller that takes place largely in an enclosed space. What he did with a submarine before, he does with an airplane now. Confinement is good for suspense: it concentrates the excitement in a claustrophobia-inducing situation, making it that much more explosive.

Air Force One begins with a Russo - American night raid on the Kazakhstan headquarters of General Radek, a renegade officer who wants to set himself up as an old-style dictator. (Radek being the standard Eastern European villain's name in Cold War movies, but never that of a Russian general, I felt forewarned about the screenplay.) The surprise attack is thrillingly staged and shot, especially because you don't quite know who is doing what to whom. This is followed by a victory banquet in Moscow, where the U.S. President, James Marshall, and the Russian President, Petrov, celebrate their capture of Radek, achieved, I must say, in a violent and bloody manner for which I know of no recent historical precedent.

Next, Marshall, his wife, and their 12-year-old daughter board Air Force One, the presidential plane, for Washington. Also on the plane are a half-dozen Russians led by Ivan Korshunov, ostensibly a team of cameramen (does one need six?) shooting a documentary about the trip. In fact, they are Radek henchmen who have shot the real cinematographers, and will take the President and his entourage as hostages to be swapped for Radek. It's a bit improbable that these men would not be recognized, particularly as Gary Oldman plays Korshunov, and anyone who has seen a recent Oldman movie must know he is up to no good.

With the help of a traitorous American security staffer, the Korshunov gang shoots its way into taking over the plane, except for President Marshall (Harrison Ford), who seems to have parachuted to safety in an "escape pod." This, however, is eventually discovered empty: Marshall is hiding on the plane, which he proposes to reconquer singlehanded.

Meanwhile in Washington, Vice President Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) has convened an emergency session of the Cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and is conducting telephone negotiations with Korshunov. Some feeble humor is squeezed out of whether she or the Secretary of Defense should be in charge, an issue that an obscure expert on the Constitution has to resolve. Korshunov demands the release of Radek, and will shoot one of the numerous American hostages every half hour until his terms are met. As yet, no one knows Marshall is hiding on the plane.

Marshall's problem -- aside from everything else -- is that at the Moscow dinner he made a speech, backed by Petrov, about there being no negotiating with terrorists, and certainly no compromise. But what if the lives of his wife and daughter are at stake (not to mention his own, which a man of his caliber would readily sacrifice for his country's good)?

And what exactly is that caliber? Well, he was a war hero in the U.S. Air Force, is smart and canny as all getout, and, for a man of a certain age, is in tiptop physical condition. He is adept at machine-gunplay, fisticuffs, and stalking and evading the heavily armed terrorists; he even speaks enough Russian to pull a fast one. Perhaps he also knows how to run the country.

In Das Boot, suspense worked splendidly because the protagonist was a German submarine captain torpedoing our ships. He was the enemy, and we wanted him and his U-boat destroyed. But he was an honorable enemy and a decent chap, and the filmmaker, a fellow German, made him and his merry crew deeply sympathetic. We could neither predict the outcome nor, torn as we were, know whom to root for. That was involvement; that was suspense.

In Air Force One, however, we know that no U.S. President, especially if played by Harrison Ford, can come to serious harm. So the excitement must come from vicariously experiencing Marshall's adventures, his agony and ecstasy, and appropriating his nobility, perils, and ultimate triumph. That strikes me as a mug's game.

Ford is perfect. Handsome in a clean-cut but not especially movieish way, a just good enough actor to sustain protracted, desperate dauntlessness -- nothing about him sets him much above our own presumed courage and capability. When he clandestinely, from the plane's hold, phones the White House, he momentarily cannot remember the number -- that's how human he is!

As for Gary Oldman, he has become quiet, subtle evil incarnate, but always with at least one guaranteed enormous tantrum, perhaps stipulated by contract. Here he has a chance to be smooth, cocky, Russian-accented, and bestial, and enjoy a terrific blowup, as vicious as any actor could wish for. And then there is that tiny but vastly satisfied smirk with which he dispatches victims, for the like of which we may have to go back all the way to Jack Palance in Shane.

As Madam Vice President, Glenn Close treats us to her well-known craggy yet compassionate doughtiness, inspirational to behold. If only we could warm to that face which could easily double as a cookie cutter, and the smugness that, no matter what the Constitution may say about it, makes her the perfect choice to negotiate with Gary Oldman.