This movie is rated as the number one ’President’ movie of the decade. So it kindled my interest to watch it on VCD. It didn’t disappoint me. It’s High Noon 36, 000 feet in the air, as director Wolfgang Petersen gives saudiences a straight-ahead hero cum commander-in-chief, Harrison Ford.
Righteously framing a policy change by admitting to America’s past reluctance to respond quickly to international terrorism, President James Marshall (Ford) sets the stage for a showdown in uncomfortably close quarters with an unhinged group of Russian extremists led by Gary Oldman. The film quickly picks up the pace during the terrorists’ convincingly messy hijacking of the First Plane, and moves fairly relentlessly throughout -- with the exception of the minutes spent watching Ford tiptoe through the plane in search of a gun, for the love of God.
Director Petersen even squeezed in screen time for some acting between all the bullets and high-altitude perils: Ford is a president who kills and cries when his daughter’s life is threatened by another brilliant Oldman villain, likely to be overlooked as ... another Oldman villain. Sadly, Glenn Close’s turn as the vice president and the behind-the-scenes political machinations are just an excuse for some of the lowest-common- denominator dialogue, which is disappointing. But these flaws are hard to focus on when you’re being distracted by such effective (US)patriotic drum-beating.
This movie is worth watching once.