Air Force One (1997) | Dated Drama That Still Entertains
For the first time in many years, I watched Air Force One, one of Harrison Ford’s most successful movies outside the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises. I saw it in theaters as a young teenager when it came out and I was blown away by the action and drama. It introduced me to Gary Oldman and his ability to play wildly different characters (especially villains) since I had seen him play a very different character in The Fifth Element just a few months prior. Air Force One was also a movie that had big set-piece explosions, including a very computer-generated airplane crash that was amazing at the time but looks laughably bad today.
There are a ton of things about Air Force One that—as an adult with more wisdom, awareness, and cynicism than that of a young teenager—I couldn’t help but laugh at due to the absurdity that was meant to be dramatically impactful. Considering this came out during the Clinton years, the idea that Bill would put his life, presidency, and country at risk to save Hilary from terrorists just made me chuckle. I implore you to think about any presidents since 1997 in this situation, as I’m sure you’ll laugh at the thought of at least one of them. The movie is just wild in a lot of ways and very much a product of the naive 1990s in which most Americans weren’t aware that anyone hated us after that pesky Soviet Union was dissolved.
However, despite all its goofy flaws and dated qualities, I think that Air Force One does one thing well when it comes to storytelling that you don’t necessarily see in modern films. The main conflict of the film could be summarized simply as: terrorists have highjacked Air Force One and the President of the United States must fight them off to retake the plane and save his family. It’s very silly when you think about it in those terms, but the movie is essentially trying to imagine a scenario in which the leader of the U.S. is also an action hero. That’s not the quality of Air Force One I want to highlight, though.
There are many smaller arcs to the story that naturally progress and lead into each other, raising the stakes for the characters involved. The core plot never changes, and the characters all have their same motivations throughout, but events occur that escalate the tension, creating a new problem that is resolved only to be replaced by a more pressing problem. If you look past the dated ridiculousness of the film and just enjoy it for what it is—something akin to a Commando or Rambo of the 1990s—you still can see a very clear and defined screenplay. I’ll explain what I mean with a rough summary of the events in the film. Spoilers ahead.
Once Air Force One gets in the air, we see a Secret Service agent betray everyone by allowing the terrorists to get ahold of the guns onboard. Rather than hide his identity, the film shows the audience who it is without informing the other characters—this is something I’ll talk about later. The terrorists begin their attack and storm the cockpit, killing the pilots. One of the terrorists manages to prevent the plane from crashing, but also from being captured. Meanwhile, the Secret Service get the president down to the escape pod room and launch the pod. Obviously, the president doesn’t get on it because there would be no movie, but the terrorists think he’s escaped. We as the audience then get to know something the heroes don’t know and something the villains don’t know, which adds a little interest to the drama and how it’s all going to play out. By doing this, the audience almost becomes involved in the movie.
Assuming the president has escaped, the terrorists seek another method to get what they want by threatening the lives of their hostages on the plane with an ultimatum that one will be executed every 30 minutes until their demands are met. It’s from this point that the movie starts raising the stakes. After the president manages to kill one of the terrorists, the leader kills one of the hostages in retaliation and in an attempt to get him to reveal himself. The president instead manages to cause a fuel leak in an effort to force the plane to land. The terrorists then demand the plane be refueled in the air while threatening to kill everyone onboard. While they’re distracted, the president manages to secretly get to the hostages and, using advanced fax-machine technology, is able to trick the terrorists into lowering their altitude so most of the hostages can escape while the plane refuels. When the terrorists eventually find out, they cause an explosion, nearly killing the president and blowing up the refuel plane, which almost causes Air Force One to crash. It’s a big event and it’s also the turning point of the film.
From there it only gets worse for the heroes. Now, the terrorists know the identity of the man who had been causing all the problems and hold all the cards. The president becomes a hostage quickly who caves to the demands when his family is threatened and calls the Russian president to free the evil rebel general who would cause untold death and destruction if released from prison—or so we’re told. Eventually, the president manages to escape their clutches and kill the remaining terrorists, including Gary Oldman’s vicious villain with the ever-memorable line, “Get off my plane.” Even with the villain defeated, the president is not allowed to relax as he has to rush back to the phone to call off the evil general’s release, who is then killed while attempting to escape the prison. Everyone in Russia celebrates the general’s demise, Washington D.C. is ecstatic when they hear that Air Force One has been retaken, and all is well with the world once again, right? Wrong!
Enemy fighter planes from bases loyal to General Evil Pants attack Air Force One! Thankfully, the president is, in addition to a terrorist-killing badass, a pilot, of course. Now, he has to fly the plane himself as he awaits assistance from nearby U.S. Air Force fighter planes. The air battle is eventually won by the Americans, but Air Force One is too damaged to land and leaking fuel. From there, it’s a race against the clock to get another plane over to perform a dramatic rescue of the survivors. Finally, when time seemingly runs out, the turncoat Secret Service agent reveals himself in the hopes he can escape. In one last dramatic clash of hero and villain, the president only narrowly manages to get off Air Force One in time.
During all these moments are lots of gunfire, punches being thrown, and Harrison Ford grunting, but there are plenty of scenes to break up the action with quieter drama and dialogue. These give you a chance to catch your breath while characterizing the heroes and villains. Gary Oldman acts his ass off to be as menacing and heartless as possible, while still maintaining a confident presence in every scene. He’s the primary villain of the film, but there is also the rogue agent that is established early on to take his place. When Oldman’s character is killed, there are still approximately twenty minutes left in the film. We as the audience know that, at some point, the agent has to become a threat in some way. Throughout Air Force One, there are multiple moments in which the treacherous agent is put in a position in which he could kill the president but never does. This directly relates to a famous Alfred Hitchcock analogy of how to establish tension in a scene: Show two people talking at a table, unaware that there is a bomb ticking away beneath it. We as the audience are allowed to be on edge because we know something the other characters don’t. Even though there are plenty of scenes in which a problem is solved and tragedy is avoided, the fact that the proverbial bomb is always under the table means we can never truly relax.
If you look at all the moments I’ve described that take place in Air Force One, you can see how one thing can lead to another and another and another. It’s in this regard that I think the movie has one of the better, easily-defined screenplays of any action movie. There are certainly other films that I think have far better screenplays, but the reason I wanted to highlight Air Force One is because the points at which the story shifts are very obvious. I also wanted to do so because it’s all within a ridiculously dated movie that portrays America as a gloriously good country that has done no wrong, with an idealistic, badass example of a man leading it, instead of the more realistic scenario of a geriatric zombie or an oversized Cheeto from New York running away to their escape pods.
Just some food for thought. If there are any other examples that spring to mind for you as movies with their events obviously mapped out in a similar regard, I’d be curious to hear them.
