The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 20: Air Force One (1997)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may remember when I last chatted about Brannigan, the John Wayne thriller in this mad series of looking at all the films in the Radio Times Film Guide (2013) I bought for £2.50 last year, I said that one of the things that made it watchable was the fact that the cast knew full well it wasn't producing something deep and meaningful about the human condition. They were having fun. And when approached in the same manner so would the audience.

If only the same approach could be seen on Air Force One. A more po faced piece of poo you'd be hard to see in a long, long while.

It takes a potboiler thriller concept, the plane of the American president is hijacked by terrorists, and treats the script as sacred text. Not to be changed in anyway.

And that starts with the score by Jerry Goldstein. Stand to attention and salute the flag music. Not so much in your face. More boxing your ears.

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen he who will forever remembered for directing Das Boat but here showing that when it comes to planes it's all run of the mill and nothing special.

It's one of those films where lots of money appears to have been spent on everything so that there's plenty of  weapons going bang and the depiction of the Presidential plane certainly looks real enough. Shame shame some of that money didn't go on the script.

This film has less tension than a stretched elastic band. The key problem is the character of the President himself. Let's pause for a moment here.

He's handsome (hey he looks just like Harrison Ford). He has a wife and a child (family man and fertile). He is a man of political principle. He is a feminist (Glenn Close is the vice president). He's been awarded the Medal of Honour (so brave and patriotic). He is President of the United States of America but well liked around the world. He speaks Russian but also likes American Football (Cosmopolitan yet still one of the guys!)

So when Air Force One is hijacked there's only one man capable of confronting a group of Russian ex military angry communist commando types.

Where does such a person exist anywhere in the world and can he/she be the next Prime Minister of Britain please? This is the President as aspiration. When you realise this then all tension goes. You might not know the route the film takes but it's destination is obvious.

Even Gary Oldman as head of the hijackers treats this seriously with an East European accent so thick you could have made borscht from it.

Of course watching it makes me realise that in it's historical context it's probably confusing for younger viewers. As it's set between the time of Communism and the rise of Putin when Russia was entering into the wide world of capitalism but not without pains in doing so.. It's actually more confusing for the youth audience I'd suspect than watching a film where the Communists were still in power.

The other funny thing watching it was that potentially a better film was there. Focusing instead on the Glenn Close character and how she would deal with an attack on Air Force One as vice president from the White House. The audience not being shown the actual attack on Air Force One. Now that would have been an interesting watch. Unfortunately for us we got this one.

This film tries to be Die Hard. It should have tried harder.

Until the next time.