Executive Privilege
- Review By:
- tpb
- Date:
- November 15, 2008
- Movie:
- Executive Decision
- Director:
- Stuart Baird
- Released:
- 1996
- Good Guy:
- David Grant
- Played By:
- Kurt Russell
- Bad Guy:
- Nagi Hassan
- Played By:
- David Suchet
- MPAA Rating:
- R
- Family Friendly Ages:
- Not for kids
Kurt Russell is one of those actors who brings a certain spark to every role he plays. (Don't condemn him for Tango And Cash (1989). He shares equal billing with Stallone on that one). Russell's David Grant is a political analyst who has worked out where some stolen nerve gas has gone: the baggage hold on an enormous 747 passenger plane enroute across the Atlantic to the United States. The plane has been hijacked by terrorists led by David Suchet's Nagi Hassan who are trying to negotiate the release of a Nationalist leader (see "Air Force One"). Grant then is asked to go along for the ride as the US military works out a way to board the plane in mid-flight; deposit specially trained commandos in the hold; defuse the bomb; and neutralize the terrorists. The movie is somewhat prescient in a 9/11 way as the target soon becomes the Pentagon and the plane becomes the bomb. However, in this case, the terrorists are hoping to use the nerve gas bomb to wipe out a good part of the east coast populace as well as the Pentagon building. Steven Seagal delivers a fine performance when he gets sucked out of the plane early in the film and dropped to his death. The rest of his appearances however are typically dull in that indiosyncratic, sleepy, Seagallian way. Kurt Russell though, does a fine job of being the everyman hero who steps up when he needs to to devise a way to communicate with the ground forces (see “Air Force One”), knock out the terrorists one by one (see “Air Force One”), inspire the men to greatness (see “Air Force One”), and work out who is the inside man (see “Air Force One”). He ends up with the girl, Hallie Berry, and all is well in the end (see “Air Force One”). One must wonder though... do megabomb-makers really go to all that trouble to install multiple decoy and hidden laser-beam triggers in all these lethal devices? Are they really anticipating a team of bomb-defusers sitting by the thing puzzling out how to deactivate it? Nonetheless, Executive Decision is utterly watchable, very suspenseful, and much more plausible than Air Force One; making it, by far, the better movie. It also helps that it also doesn't have that distracting swelling, orchestral, saluting and forced patriotism getting in the way of the action scenes.
