Presumed President
Harrison Ford for President?
It sounds like an idea whose time has come. For the last few years--let's be
honest about it, ever since Clinton got elected--Hollywood has exiled our
fearless leader to a kind of movie hell. In The American President he
was a shy, lonely widower. In Independence Day his wife went down in a
helicopter and he got upstaged by the more manly Will Smith. In Absolute
Power he was a real lemon--a lecherous sadist and an accomplice to murder.
But at long last, in Air Force One the president gets to be something
other than a loser or a scoundrel. He's James Marshall, a Vietnam War hero and
a stand-up guy. Even rarer these days, his wife (played by Wendy Crewson) is
actually alive, and he's still in love with her. The only problem is that he's
come to power at the dawn of a confusing new era, when globalization is
blurring national boundaries and the world is more vulnerable than ever before
to random, heavily accented terrorist villains.
Thank God
our reigning action hero is at the helm--or so you'd think. Actually, Air
Force One takes less than five minutes to demonstrate the drawbacks of
Harrison Ford as the leader of the free world. It opens in Moscow, where
President Marshall delivers a major speech explaining why he authorized
American troops to capture Gen. Radek, the tyrannical leader of Kazakhstan.
Radek is dangerous and evil, he says, and although he presents no immediate
threat to American interests, it's high time for us to abandon such piddling,
hypocritical concerns as the national interest. Out with wimpy measures like
economic sanctions--it's time to become uncompromising moral enforcers.
Marshall warns terrorists around the world that from now on, "It's your turn to
be afraid." This is a depressing, scary, reckless announcement, and as Ford
delivers it you think how disturbing it would be to have someone like him as
president. For all his popularity, Ford has built his career on an
inarticulate, uncomfortable, and somewhat angry persona. What's saved him from
grimness is his status as an outsider, his flippant sense of humor, and his
lovable grin. But Han Solo and Indiana Jones were a long time ago, and lately
Ford's been cultivating a look of unrelieved pain.
Playing a powerful public figure, Ford looks as miserable
and hunted as he did in The Fugitive , and that's exactly the point.
Following his speech the president boards Air Force One to return home, and for
five minutes, in a scene so idyllic it borders on the bizarre, he's able to let
down his guard and relax in the bosom of his family. He kisses his wife. Their
daughter, adorable little Alice, announces that she'd like to visit a refugee
camp and minister to poor, helpless wounded people. Daddy worries that she's
not old enough, but Mommy laughs tenderly and says, "She couldn't stay your
little girl forever, Jim." This dialogue has the eerie earnestness of a
testimonial in an aspirin commercial, along with a dig at Clinton: James
Marshall isn't a good president because he feels our pain. He's a good
president because he feels his pain--the pain of steering the world
through this chaotic period of realignment, when all he really wants to do is
help his daughter with her homework and smooch with his wife.
It's
Global Village meets Family Values, and once this slick high concept is
established, the action can begin. Gary Oldman leads five dastardly followers
of Radek in posing as a Russian film crew, and a flirtatious moron of a White
House aide lets them on the plane. There, assisted by a turncoat American
official, they quickly take control of the aircraft. Oldman, barking out the
hysterical howls that serve as lingua franca for all cinema terrorists, calls
the White House and tells Vice President Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) that
he'll kill one hostage every half hour until Radek is released. Meanwhile the
president has gone missing. Everyone assumes he's left the plane in an "escape
pod" and is floating safely to earth; only the audience knows that he's stuck
around--first and foremost to rescue his wife and daughter, and then, if it's
convenient, to save the world.
What follows is one of the more joyless joy
rides in recent memory. The director, Wolfgang Petersen, made his mark with
Das Boot , a masterfully absorbing thriller set on board a claustrophobic
German U-boat. You'd think Petersen would have fun staging an airborne
showdown, but there's not a scene in Air Force One that wasn't done 10
times better in the underrated Kurt Russell hijacked-airplane thriller,
Executive Decision . That movie had the good sense to leave its absurd
politics (first Chechen, then Middle Eastern) on the margins, and to focus
instead on the scary ordeal of being stuck on a plane piloted by crazies. With
geeky charm, it patiently explored the plane's engineering; it literally walked
you down into the underbelly, a beautiful abstract maze of crisscrossing
steel.
Air
Force One rips off half the adventures from Executive
Decision --there's a blatantly similar scene involving the cutting of
wires--but the suspense never builds. A number of scenes actually revolve
around the astoundingly dull theme of cellular communication. Here are two
typical "action" sequences: 1) The president needs to get word to Washington
that he's still alive and hiding on board the plane. He desperately rummages
through some luggage. He finds someone's cell phone and calls the White House.
2) The president hatches a plan to help the hostages escape, but he needs to
alert the Air Force to his scheme. This time it's harder, because he's lost the
cell phone and the terrorists have shut down the regular phones, but a
presidential aide reminds him that faxes go out on an auxiliary line. Solemnly,
she leads him over to the fax station, where he scribbles out a message and
dials. Will the fax go through? Tension mounts. After a few moments, we hear
the telltale squeak of a successful transmission, accompanied by triumphal
music.
Such scenes do not a nail-biter make. Harrison Ford tries
to help by looking anguished as he hits, kicks, and shoots his way to the final
duel with Oldman. But again, the relentless search for with-it political
relevance slows the film down. Oldman is supposed to represent reactionary
Russians enraged by the new economic reforms. "I'm doink it for Muzzer Russia,"
he drawls, and "I veel not rest unteel zee capitalists are dragged through the
streets und shot." The rhetoric may be modern, but the character is a cartoon
anachronism, right down to his corny, drawn-out delivery, which clocks in at
about five words per minute. And his cause seems so pathetically weak compared
to the raging progress of capitalism around the world that watching him strut
is like watching someone shoot a gun you know is filled with blanks.
There's not a single thing
about Air Force One to recommend, except perhaps the controlled
performance of Glenn Close, who does remarkably well as the recipient of
several phone calls from the sky. But there is something strangely comforting
about how bad this movie is. For a while there, all those stories about
weak-willed presidents were worrisome. It was hard not to see them as tapping
in to a deep-seated nationwide gloom. After Air Force One , though, we
should be able to breathe easier. It is just too boring to reflect our actual
fantasy life, and so brazenly concerned with exploiting the Zeitgeist
that it makes you wonder if it isn't Hollywood that's shrouded in gloom, while
the rest of us are getting along fine.
"He will not negotiate."
First Lady (Wendy Crewson) confronts Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman) (44
seconds) :
A fight on board Air
Force One (39 seconds) :
