07/25/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Air Force One
Mr. President's wild ride

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews, Paul Guilfoyle, Xander Berkeley, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell. A Columbia Pictures release written by Andrew W. Marlowe, directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 118 minutes.

The president's plane is commandeered by terrorists in Air Force One, a rousing, thrilling, tension-filled sky-high adventure with Harrison Ford trying to save the day as the chief executive who is suddenly armed and more dangerous than the terrorists.

Air Force One flies on adrenaline. Noisy shootouts. A hair-raising crash-landing. A missile homing in on Air Force One. Back-door parachute jumps. Roaring enemy MIG jets. Mid-air rescues. A fiery Star Wars kind of finale that's really just a prelude to more exciting stuff.

There's also the thudding, gut-wrenching tension of the "next victim" subplot, as the terrorists begin to carry out their threat to kill a hostage every half hour until their demands are met. Suddenly we're trapped witnesses to this awful lottery, which includes the president's wife (Wendy Crewson) and 12-year-old daughter (Liesel Matthews).

Ford's President James Marshall, hiding in the bowels of the plane, is a frustrated pawn to the carnage as the terrorists broadcast their crimes over the plane's intercom. Will he come out of hiding to save the day or just let it go on until he finds a more opportune moment to intervene? Anything seems possible in Andrew W. Marlowe's frantic script, which keeps everything on edge.

Air Force One was directed in hold-onto-your-seat style by Wolfgang Petersen (Outbreak, In the Line of Fire) who came to worldwide fame at the helm of Das Boot, the underwater thriller that looked sympathetically at the crew of a doomed Nazi submarine. Apparently Peterson does some of his best work in tight places, like subs and the cabin and cargo hold of the 747 in Air Force One.

He toys with the audience, mixing squirmy moments with tense laughs. At one point the president, hiding from the terrorists, finds a cellular phone in a suitcase and tries to call the White House switchboard . . . but the operator there doesn't believe him.

Ford makes Marshall the kind of fantasy leader Americans long for. Strong. Decisive. Shooting from the hip. A "do the right thing" president dedicated to fairness, no matter how difficult that may prove to be.

No waffling. No Whitewater. No Indonesian billionaires.

Instead of Paula Jones . . . Indiana Jones!



Setting the tension

At the start of Air Force One, Marshall stages a raid -- in cooperation with the Russians -- to remove charismatic Gen. Alexander Radek (Jurgen Prochnow), who wants to return Russia to its old Soviet Empire days. Radek's imprisonment leads to the jumbo jet's takeover by a terrorist gang led by one of his fanatically impassioned followers, Ivan Korshunov (the chameleon Gary Oldman), who demands Radek's freedom.

Soon the terrorists are running wild through the jumbo jet and the president is on the run, too, popping out of hatches to battle them one by one and often hand to hand. (Here Air Force One often recalls last year's Kurt Russell airplane adventure Executive Decision.) He's also frantically trying to get messages back to Washington, where his nervous vice president is looking for any scrap of information while trying to fend off a bald-faced power grab by the secretary of defense (Dean Stockwell).

Vice President Kathryn Bennett is played by Glenn Close (yes, Cruella De Vil, who most recently played the first lady in Mars Attacks!) in an unflattering hairdo under harsh lighting. That underscores the harried, desperate mood Close conveys so expertly as a tough bargainer playing a high-stakes game that seems a no-win situation.

It's these melodramatic scenes back in Washington that ground Air Force One in some semblance of reality, although sometimes the dialogue goes cornily overboard. After declaring that President Marshall is a Medal of Honor winner, Bennett intones solemnly, "If he's up there, he's the best chance we have." Sure, Rambo in the sky.



Ford, Oldman are formidable

Ford has played this character so many times before that his brand of heroism is second nature. But it's the kind of heroism that isn't infallible. He's human. Things can go haywire. He's frustrated as much as he finds success in his rescue schemes. Bad things can and do happen to him, which fires up the film's tension.

Oldman, whose diverse characters include Lee Harvey Oswald and Count Dracula, scores strongly as the passionate terrorist leader. Ivan sees himself as a hero to his people and a devoted follower of the incarcerated general, who he believes is the only person who can restore Russia to its dominant place in the world. His cruelty is born of idealism of the most terrifying and uncompromising kind. Oldman balances Ivan's fervor, however, with softer touches that make the hair-trigger character frighteningly edgy.

Most of the other cast members are there to fill space or to be victims, although William H. Macy (of Fargo fame) stands out as an Air Force officer who can't fly a plane but does his best in a pinch. And Matthews shines in a scene in which the terrorized first daughter faces down the scary Ivan, even though Ivan makes an occasional good point about U.S. policy versus the rest of the world.

Fasten your seatbelt. It's a hair-raising flight.