Action hero president - Air Force One Reviews

If someone had told me there would one day be a movie about a President ?Ford? and a mishap involving AIR FORCE ONE, I would have thought Chevy Chase would surely play the lead. (AIR FORCE one must be understood from the standpoint of a president -- Clinton -- who lacked any military service record, and not from one -- Bush -- who tried to cultivate an image of landing fighter planes on carrier ships.) But, Wolfgang Petersen?s AIR FORCE ONE is not that kind of movie. This AIR FORCE ONE is about President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), a decorated war-hero and political maverick; a sort of respect-commander, in chief. After a tough, anti-terrorist speech in Moscow, his plane is taken over by hijackers who board the craft posing as Russian journalists (with some inside help from a traitorous Secret Service agent). In the fire-fight that ensues, the president?s security detail manages to shepherd the boss (but, not the First Family) to an escape pod, which is then released with parachutes. Needless to say, however, President Marshall is not in that pod, and the bad guys are not off the hook. But, the hijackers, led by a ruthless nationalist (Gary Oldman), do not immediately realize that the President is still on board until a few of the terrorists start turning up dead. The balance of the movie is about how Marshall manages to communicate to his vice-president (Glenn Close) and staff that he is still secretly aboard the presidential plane, and begins to out-smart and out-maneuver the captors, until the tide is finally turned. Of course, it goes down to the wire in hand-to-hand combat and spectacular air-borne sequences, until there is but one man standing ? literally ? aboard AIR FORCE ONE. Due to the nature of the plot (there?s precious little of it beyond what I have sketched out, above), I cannot discuss any more of the content of the film; I know that many of you will see it, which renders the material as sort of classified pop-information. Instead, I would like to examine the way the President of the United States is portrayed in this film, and how that treatment flows out of certain, recent trends in Hollywood. Consider All the President?s Men, which tightly revolves around President Nixon, but never exactly barges into the Oval Office the way Oliver Stone?s Nixon later would. And, think of all those disaster movies in which the President is always a mystery man who is shot always with his back to the camera, or in silhouette C never revealing the identity of ?The President.? More recent films showed us a human face, but made sure to conceal the political preferences of movie presidents: What was the party affiliation, for instance, of the president this director (Petersen) put In the Line of Fire? It is only a recent phenomenon for make-believe presidents to be examined in more intimate ways. This trend has shadowed a similar tendency in the way we treat real-life politicians. In The American President, Michael Douglas actually falls in love in the White House. Far from the shadowy figure of seventies films, in Hot Shots: Part Deux, Leslie Nielsen is actually a laughable, prat-falling commander-in-chief. Independence Day gave us the first action-hero, fighter-pilot president. But, the ultimate attempt by Hollywood to humanize the presidency has been seen in attempts ? in films like Forrest Gump and Contact ? to erase the line between history and entertainment, and let real presidents walk into make-believe worlds. Some see, in a movie like AIR FORCE ONE, restored respect for the institution of the presidency. In the context set out above, I see it as the final demystification of that office and the necessary, postmodern deconstruction of a national symbol. But, enough of what AIR FORCE ONE looks like from the standpoint of removed contemplation; up-close and personal, it?s a thrill-a-minute, action-packing, rollicking blockbuster of an American summer-time hit! It?s not a lot of things, but it doesn?t even try to be. It?s an honest, straight-forward, tidy action film, and as such, it delivers better than any other movie that was made in 1997. (Carlos Colorado)