Movie Mahal

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My kids are at that age where I’m persuaded to watch things against my own will. It can be pretty painful at times as I discovered when I decided to embark upon a viewing of a 90s action film starring Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. This is one of those mid budget action films that did very well at the time but is instantly forgettable, and for all the right reasons. It was directed by German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen who was on a bit of a roll in the 90s. A competent and technically accomplished filmmaker, Petersen hit the big time in Hollywood with the international success of Eastwood’s In the Line of Fire, an underrated thriller from the early 90s, and which really stands up even today expressly because of that genius performance from Malkovich.

Air Force One is one of those noisy high concept films cooked up in a studio test lab and is self-obsessed with the notion of raising the stakes as a means of undermining what should have been a lean ninety minutes thriller. Trapped on board a plane, Ford’s president transforms into an unbelievable blend of Houdini and Steven Seagal, karate chopping and choke holding anyone who dares to speak in a phony Kazakhstan accent. There is no saving grace. Not even Gary Oldman who is watchable in anything he does can salvage the dignity of Glenn Close or Dean Stockwell from the realms of this bankrupt exercise in sycophantic flag waving hogwash.