Movie · 1997 · Action, Thriller · 2h 4m · R · English
Curator score: 3.4/10 (354.4K ratings)
The fate of the nation rests on the courage of one man.
Overview
When Russian neo-nationalists hijack Air Force One, the world's most secure and extraordinary aircraft, the President is faced with a nearly impossible decision to give in to terrorist demands or sacrifice not only the country's dignity, but the lives of his wife and daughter.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.4/10
IMDb: 6.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.24/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%
Metacritic: 62
TMDB: 6.5/10
Director
Wolfgang Petersen
Production
Radiant Productions
Cast
Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Liesel Matthews, Paul Guilfoyle, Xander Berkeley, William H. Macy, Dean Stockwell, Tom Everett, Jürgen Prochnow, Donna Bullock, Michael Ray Miller, Carl Weintraub, Elester Latham, Elya Baskin, Levan Uchaneishvili, David Vadim, Andrew Divoff, Ilia Volok
Where to watch
fuboTV, Philo
Curator Review
Verdict
A big, shamelessly effective 90s action thriller: preposterous, patriotic, and built around a great Harrison Ford-versus-Gary Oldman showdown. It’s not subtle, but it is sturdy, fast-moving, and still delivers the kind of crowd-pleasing tension that made it a staple.
Best for
fans of Die Hard-style siege thrillers
viewers who like charismatic star vehicles
people in the mood for loud, efficient 90s studio action
audiences who enjoy patriotic popcorn movies with a wink
Skip if
you need realism or political nuance
you dislike jingoistic action-movie wish fulfillment
you want character depth over momentum
you’re allergic to 90s blockbuster earnestness
Overview
Air Force One is exactly the kind of movie that survives on premise, pace, and star power. Wolfgang Petersen turns a ludicrous setup into a clean, propulsive thriller, and Harrison Ford sells the fantasy of a president who can improvise under pressure and still sound like the most capable man in the room.
Worth noting
The movie is also very much a product of its era: broad, patriotic, and not especially interested in subtle geopolitics. That’s part of the appeal. It plays like a high-concept pressure cooker, with Gary Oldman giving the villainy a nasty, theatrical edge and the airplane setting doing a lot of the suspense work for free.
Bottom line
If you want a polished, old-school studio action movie that knows exactly what it is, this still lands. If you want something smarter or more grounded, it will feel like a glossy fantasy. But as a piece of popcorn entertainment, it remains hard to resist.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Matt Singer (3★) · 1173 likes
How often do you think Obama turns to someone on Air Force One and says "Get off my plane!" like Harrison Ford? Six, seven times a day?
matt lynch (3.5★) · 779 likes
It's hard to overstate just how exciting and also how terrifically absurd this is; a total parody of itself. You can cringe a bit at the endless lives expended to support a dubious foreign policy decision (though it's presented as a human rights one, ok, fine) and by extension the legacy of this politician, but whatever who cares get off my plane, this is one of the great exactly-what-it-says-on-the-box movies.
Will Menaker (3.5★) · 751 likes
The single most neoconservative movie of the nineties. Renders the vision and philosophy of what would become the George W Bush administration in brilliant Wolfgang Peterson/Michael Balhaus style. Here we have the president commit to using American military power to confront any evil state or group in the world at any time for any reason and shortly thereafter actually becomes John McClane when "neo-communist" terrorists take his plane and family hostage. It goes without saying that President Marshall, by selfishly… more The single most neoconservative movie of the nineties. Renders the vision and philosophy of what would become the George W Bush administration in brilliant Wolfgang Peterson/Michael Balhaus style. Here we have the president commit to using American military power to confront any evil state or group in the world at any time for any reason and shortly thereafter actually becomes John McClane when "neo-communist" terrorists take his plane and family hostage. It goes without saying that President Marshall, by selfishly… more
Sean Fennessey (3.5★) · 534 likes
In this film, CNN interrupts regularly scheduled programming to announce that there are “unconfirmed reports that Air Force One has crashed.” In other words, someone told someone else—erroneously—that the President’s plane crashed and CNN producers thought, “We gotta say this live on the air ASAP without confirming.” This is one of the most unrealistic thrillers of the ‘90s, but for some reason that part bothered me the most.
Kenneth Clark (3.5★) · 434 likes
Insert literally any of the past ten presidents and this movie becomes infinitely funnier
2013 · Action, Thriller · 2h · R · Curator 1.2/10 (462.7K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, AMC+, Philo, BBC America, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A more aggressive, modern version of the presidential-under-siege fantasy, with similar wish-fulfillment energy.