Air Force One (film)

Air Force One is a 1997 American political action thriller film directed and co-produced by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Xander Berkeley, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Paul Guilfoyle and Jürgen Prochnow.

It follows Air Force One being hijacked by a group of terrorists who demand the release of their country’s imprisoned dictator and the President's attempt to rescue everyone on board by retaking his plane.

[2] A joint operation between American and Russian special forces captures General Ivan Radek, the dictator of a rogue neo-Soviet regime in Kazakhstan that retained its nuclear weapons, threatening war.

Three weeks later, U.S. President James Marshall attends a diplomatic dinner in Moscow, during which he praises the operation and insists the United States will no longer negotiate with terrorists.

Marshall and his entourage, including his wife Grace and daughter Alice, and several of his cabinet and advisers, prepare to return home on Air Force One.

After takeoff, Secret Service agent Gibbs, a mole, enables Korshunov and his men to obtain weapons and hijack the plane, killing multiple security and military personnel before taking the rest hostage, including Grace and Alice.

He covertly kills two of Korshunov's men and obtains a satellite phone to communicate with Vice President Kathryn Bennett, letting his staff know he is still alive and aboard the plane.

Korshunov, assuming that it is merely a Secret Service agent in the cargo hold, contacts Bennett and demands Radek's release, threatening to kill a hostage every half-hour.

Marshall devises a plan to trick Korshunov into bringing Air Force One to a lower altitude of 15,000 feet for a mid-air refueling so that the hostages can parachute safely off the plane.

As a KC-10 tanker docks with Air Force One, Marshall helps capture another loyalist and escorts the hostages to the cargo hold, where the majority parachutes to safety.

A standby United States Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130E with the callsign Liberty 24 is called to help, sending parajumpers on tether lines to rescue the survivors.

They based some of the film's scenes on the touring experience when the terrorists disguised as journalists survey the plane's layout and begin to take their seats.

The director felt it was more suspenseful to keep the audience in the know in the final cut and specifically pointed to the scene in which Marshall gives Gibbs a gun before escorting the hostages from the conference room to the parachutes in the cargo hold.

[12] General Radek's palace, seen in the film's opening, was portrayed by two locations in Cleveland, Ohio: the exterior was Severance Hall, and the interior was the Cuyahoga County Courthouse.

The Russian prison where Radek was incarcerated was the Ohio State Reformatory, previously seen in The Shawshank Redemption and also used for Godsmack's music video for "Awake" in 2000.

McNeely receives a credit on the back cover for "Additional Music in the Motion Picture", but none of his work is on the CD, although his cues include the material heard when Air Force One is under attack.

[23] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone awarded the film 3.5/4 stars, describing it as "superior escapism", and concluding, "Air Force One doesn't insult the audience.

"[24] Todd McCarthy of Variety described the film as "a preposterously pulpy but quite entertaining suspense meller [melodrama]" that is "spiked by some spectacularly staged and genuinely tense action sequences".

He lauded the film's antagonist: "[Gary] Oldman, in his second malevolent lead of the summer, after The Fifth Element, registers strongly as a veteran of the Afghan campaign pushed to desperate lengths to newly ennoble his country.

"[25] In a mixed review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4 and found it flawed and cliché-ridden yet "well-served by the quality of the performances ... Air Force One is a fairly competent recycling of familiar ingredients, given an additional interest because of Harrison Ford's personal appeal.

[33] As one of the most popular action films of the 1990s, Air Force One earned $37.1 million during its opening weekend and ranked number one at the box office, beating Men in Black.

His senior Staff and Cabinet include Vice President Kathryn Bennett (former congresswoman and trial attorney from New Jersey), Chief of Staff Lloyd Shepherd (an old friend from U of I), National Security Advisor Jack Doherty, Secretary of Defense Walter Dean, Deputy NSA Director Thomas Lee, Deputy Press Secretary Melanie Mitchell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Northwood, and Air Force General Greeley (under whom Marshall served in Vietnam).