Air Force One (1997) Our fun-filled summer tour of all the "Die Hard" clones wouldn't be complete without a good look at this one........the most spectacular and involved of the bunch.....
It remains a blast 'n a half to watch......but 21 years later, lots of stuff struck us funny......
The Fantasy Prez.......Who doesn't daydream about a President like this? (We bet the Democrats do.....) A Congressional Medal Of Honor winner and Vietnam war hero......an implacable foe of murderous dictators and autocrats (Heh, heh....compare him to who we have in reality....heh, heh....).......a loving family man......strong but somehow gently self-effacing......and best of all, he looks and sounds just like Harrison Ford! (......appearing lean 'n mean, as if he never, ever gnawed on a KFC extra-crispy wing....)
Hmmm......we're anything but ultra-conservative, but maybe we
would be better off electing a combat veteran as President.......putting Vietnam draft-dodgers in the White House never seems to work out well.......
Da Plane! Da Plane! As if it's a Ken Adam designed Air Force One, it comes equipped with an escape pod. (We'd love a peek at any escape pod in the real, current AFO......our guess, it's probably shaped like a huge Big Mac....)
And we love that the interior of this fantasy AFO can absorb endless machine-gun firefights......in which nobody spraying the bullets ever unluckily hits a window........
As if President Indiana didn't have enough problems......We still wonder.....what the hell's the deal with the traitorous Secret Service guy? Unexplained, he stays a cipher to the very end.....a closet Marxist? A deep cover KGB-er, like Keri Russell in "The Americans?" Or like our current President, just a great fan and fervent admirer of bloodthirsty killers?
Fantasy Politics.......almost as dreamy a concept as having Harrison Ford as a war hero Prez......the movie kicks off with,we kid you not........(and we did a
whoa double-take at this)....no less than a joint United States/Russian commando raid to capture a scumbag general who wants to bring back the bad old days of Communist repression and Cold War. Fun to imagine......but anyone who thinks this would ever happen still thinks Mexico's going to pay for the U.S. Border wall......
Scary Gary.....Oldman One of the best, if not
the best of all imitation-Die-Hard villains.....raging that the fall of Communism has left Russia overloaded with gangsters and prostitutes.......if Gary's character had only waited a few years for the ascension of Putin, he'd get the best of both worlds.......the return of an evil leader AND all the hookers, too.......
Jerry Goldsmith makes us stand up and salute.......No wonder Baby Orange used Goldsmith's stirring, blood-pumping main theme for his grand entrance at the Republican convention..........even if everyone knows that if terrorists ever succeeded in really commandeering Air Force One, they'd find Baby Orange cowering in the bathroom, vomiting up his Coca-Cola and super-sized Fries......
Having itemized all that......BQ
still loves us some "Air Force One".........at the end of the day, it's a jumbo tub 'o butter popcorn........about as real as "Star Wars", "You Only Live Twice" and "The Wizard Of Oz".......so we give this fellow, non-stop flight-of-fancy 4 stars (****)......can't wait until CNN finds secret photos of the Big Mac Escape Pod.......
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