| Air Force One | | Cast : | Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman | | Director : | Wolfgang Petersen | | Studio : | Columbia/Tristar Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Widescreen | | Released Date : | July 25, 1997 | | DVD Released Date : | September 02, 2003 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 24, 2005 | | Summary | Testosterone for All! | Content
 | What happens when the leader of the free world gets hijacked on his own airplane? A damn fine movie!
I like it when the good guys win. I like it when the bad guys get their @$$'s kicked in a big way. I like it when people do the right things for the right reasons and the results are good. I guess I'm old fashioned that way. That is what this film is like.
Harrison Ford plays the president. He is not just any US president; he is a former war hero and he means what he says. He stands up for what is right. While returning from a state visit to Russia, his plane gets hijacked by terrorists. The secret service manages to get the president to an escape pod and get the pod launched. When it is recovered, the president is not on board. He is still on Air Force One with the bad guys and his family and staff. He's hacked off and goes about taking care of business. For him, that means taking care of his people.
The bad guys are as bad and vicious as they can be. The good guys are scared but, mostly, they are honorable and try to do the right thing. I wish real life was like that.
The film is filled with twists and turns. It is also filled with unexpected "cliffhanger" moments. To relieve the tension, it also has some great light moments.
Watch this one when you have time to sit through the whole thing. You won't want to stop for anything.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 02, 2005 | | Summary | The Ultimate Airplane Hijacking - Winner Takes All | Content
| I was completely glued to my seat from beginning to end: this film was nonstop action, suspense and drama. While admittedly *today* in real life there would be intense security to prevent this from happening, it seems a highly plausible plot for a film, especially in 1997 when it was made. The world sat in disbelief when it was announced at a TV press conference that Kazakhstan terrorists hold the U.S. President James Marshall, delegates, and various family members as hostages up on Air Force One not long after boarding the plane in Russsia. Communications between Glenn Close, the U.S. Vice President, a prisoner on Air Force One and the U.S. Press Secretary in Washington confirmed their status ...
Harrison Ford plays the U.S. President with fearlessness and cunning. He also demonstrates superb hand-to-hand fighting skills plus superior technical expertise with a gun. He becomes the hero who manages to elude the terrorists when he remains one level below, as they overtake the pilot and copilot. He creates diversions and thwarts their various plans, all the while evading detection. Initially, they are unaware whom they are fighting. Once Ivan Korshunov, the leader, realizes it is the President of the United States who nearly single-handedly prevents them from achieving their goals, the terrorist becomes more vicious. He threatens the wife of the President at gun point and turns on the loudspeaker so the President can listen as she voices her fears. This enrages the President who takes even more serious measures to save their lives: he dumps fuel to force them to stop. The fighting scenes are unparalleled yet eventually Harrison Ford is captured. The capture of the President forces the United States to negotiate with the terrorists, despite their policy against doing so. The terrorists want the release of General Alexander Radek, the former ruler of Kazakhstan ...
The rescue of the President, delegates and their families is breath-taking. Fortunately, some manage to jump with parachutes but there are not enough and time is running out ... Air Force One does not have the ability to land. There is a daring awe-inspiring rescue up in the air at 15,000 feet. General Alexander Radek is released from his prison cell, dressed in his well-decorated uniform as he walks across the prison courtyard ... and in the end, justice prevails. Viewing this film sends chills up and down one's spine because despite the many aspects of the film that are exaggerated - terrorism is one area that *thankfully* is *not* depicted in its true scope given what we know of the events of 9-1-1 and current Iraqi War. Erika Borsos (erikab93) |
| Rating | | | Date | July 01, 2005 | | Summary | Yeah right! Like Bush, Clinton, or any other president could have done this. | Content
| This movie is a good, solid movie but it's really unrealistic. Like the president could have really taken down a large group of terrorists. I mean he's not Arnold or a military expert. He's the president for God's sake! Like any president could have done this! The movie's simply about the air force one plane that's hijacked by Russian terrorists and the president decides to stay on board and not go in the ejector seat and kick their buts! Which he of course does! Gary Oldman, Glenn Close and Harrison Ford star in this good but completely unrealistic movie.
Can you see Bill Clinton or George Bush beating up terrorists like Harrison Ford did? Maybe he should be our president, lol. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 01, 2005 | | Summary | Unbelievable (literally) | Content
| Fairly entertaining but the President's prowess was a little over the top. What's even more ridiculous (and sickening) is that the Vice President is a WOMAN! What will those hollywood liberals think of next?
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| Rating | | | Date | June 13, 2005 | | Summary | His last real success | Content
| Waiting for Indiana Jones IV to come to pass, it is always time to reflect on the sad state of Harrison Ford's career, and as we flip through the years it seems to me he hasn't had a bona fide hit since 1997. (2000's WHAT LIES BENEATH probably made money, but few credit Ford's presence in that thriller for its success; possibly it was a hit due to the well-tuned script and the expert direction by Robert Zemeckis. In any case Michelle Pfeiffer--another star of the 1990s whose career has gone sadly awry--deserves half the credit as well.) Otherwise it's like a list of one disaster after another. K-19 THE WIDOWMAKER? Dead in the water. HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE? Not a bad show but the public stayed away in droves. RANDOM HEARTS? When you look up "catastrophe" in the dictionary you get a still from this movie. SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS? Awful. WATER TO WINE (2004)? Even his fans don't know what it is! I'm not sure FIREWALL will break the curse either, it sounds like a re-tread of an earlier Ford flop called FRANTIC.
So when we look back and try to find the last good patch of Harrison Ford's once invincible streak, we come up with a thump against this indisputable box office sensation, which rules the theaters world wide for a brief spell in 97. The critics thought it piffle, but it answered a need in the US public, maybe to see a strong president defying the Russians one last time. Reactionary? No two moviegoers will read its plot the same way, but there are certainly cimilarities to the FOX TV hit "24," which it foreshadowed in so many ways, even down to the canny use of amiably sinister Xander Berkeley, the husband in SAFE. And of course the death defying traumas that occur to Air Force One in both programs.
Most of all, I think people long for a president who's more like James Marshall here, than the one we had in 1997 or the one we have now. He's a father figure, he's still vigorous and sexy, he's got a good sense of humor, knows his way around a gun AND he protects us from the threat of Glenn Close.
AIR FORCE ONE itself was a sort of comeback project for the beleaguered Ford, whose previous films had been major disappointments--the terrible SABRINA remake and the muddled IRA thriller DEVIL'S OWN with Brad Pitt. I think at that minute we really needed Harrison Ford to start thinking about how to sustain a career. Instead he just must have said Ah Screw It and switched the remote to a then-new TV show called ALLY McBEAL. The rest is film history. |
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