In the year 1997, a scant four years before September 11th, a major Hollywood studio released one of the greatest, most subversive pieces of cinematic satire ever created. Flying under the colors of a big budget studio action film, it absolutely eviscerated the ideas of US exceptionalism, nationalism as a guiding principle and making a virtue of ignorance. And even though the subtext is unmissable today, it was largely misunderstood at the time.
That film was, of course, Starship Troopers. It bombed, more or less ending the Hollywood career of actual genius Paul Verhoeven, only to eventually crawl into cult classic status as the Direct to DVD sequels were released (mostly absent subtext). But three months prior to that, a very different look at American hegemony was released, to both positive reviews and exceptional box office. And that film was Air Force One, in which Harrison Ford plays the US President as an action movie hero, taking on terrorists in hand to hand combat when they try and hijack his plane.
Watching it now, Air Force One seems less like a real movie than it does a comedy sketch, something from the irony-laced writers room of South Park. It’s almost punishingly formulaic, what-if-Die-Hard-but-he’s-the-president, and in every way a relic of 90s action movie jingoism. It hearkens back to a simpler time, when a movie could be about politics, about America’s god-given moral righteousness, in fact, without having any real political ideas at all. We never even hear whether Harrison Ford’s President James Marshall is a Republican or a Democrat. There’s no need to wonder which side he’s on, because it’s self-evident: he’s on America’s side. Fuck yeah!
To be blunt, this is not a serious film. Every political idea serves as a bit of action movie semiotics, usually to underline the heroics of the President. He’s got a speech, early in the film, explaining to a shocked audience that he will no longer allow ‘our political self interests to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right’. We’re told it’s a massive change in US policy, which the President didn’t even clear with his advisors beforehand (that’s the bravest part), but in reality, all he’s saying is we don’t negotiate with terrorists, which is pretty much every Western country’s official policy. Also, we’re going to intervene in a lot of stuff, maybe, but that’s not super clear. The point is that he’s a brave action president, and in 1997, before 9/11 and a decade of foreign adventurism, we were all quite content to leave it at that.
I’d like to make it clear, at this point, that my intention is not to shit on Air Force One. This is an entertaining movie, well directed and full of big, fun performances. It moves quick, pulls off all its action movie goals and hits all the notes it’s trying for. The big thing that has changed is the world. In 1997, Bill Clinton had just been re-elected and was about a year away from the Lewinsky scandal breaking open. Hollywood wasn’t making films like All the President’s Men anymore, they were making Independence Day and Armageddon, movies about standing in front of an American flag and punching aliens/rocks. A film that posited our country was a flawless example for the free world was a pleasant enough fiction to be taken at face value, at least by enough of us. Director Wolfgang Peterson has said in interviews that after 9/11, he never would have made this film, that it would have felt disrespectful. Maybe it would have. But as of now, it just feels very silly.
Bill Macy’s in this too. He gets shot the fuck up!
A frequent phrase you’ll see in a movie review, especially of big stupid Hollywood action flicks, is that it ‘descends into self parody’. I’d like to make the argument that Air Force One ascends into it. Gone are the days when you could watch this with your father and non-ironically lament that it sure would be cool if something like this happened in real life (which I did). Now it’s a film that feels like it’s ridiculing its own absurd fantasy premise. Scenes that were once meant to get the audience cheering now have the tone of sketch comedy, such as the scene where President Marshall is attempting to defuse a bomb, and because it’s a movie, he must cut the right colored wires. Cutting the wrong ones will result in the plane exploding, and the walkie talkie he’s getting instructions through has just cut out. So he takes a gamble, and cuts the yellow and green ones, leaving the red, white and blue ones intact. Because of American divinity, it works.
Movie star Harrison Ford, in happier times
Harrison Ford’s President Marshall is parody as well, a character so idealized he makes Indiana Jones seem downright Shakespearean. Hot off playing Jack Ryan, a comparably down-to-earth political creation, Ford musters every bit of his movie star charisma to portray this avatar of American Exceptionalism, a former war hero and Medal of Honor winner, as innately decent as he is badass. Also, a warm family man who enjoys beer and football, just like you, and every good American. Ford is slam dunk casting, and pulls this off effortlessly. 55 years old at the time, he’s just starting to develop his old man grimace, which is used here perfectly to communicate President Marshall taking offense to these damn terrorists and their impertinence. Apparently a second choice after Kevin Costner passed, he’s as ideal as the character he’s playing. (Peterson has also mentioned in interviews that he was pushing for John Malkovich to play Marshall, having enjoyed working with him on In the Line of Fire. That’s a crazy What If).
The film is non-stop action movie cliches given a nationalist twist. Supporting characters praise President Marshall constantly, to his face or otherwise, the way supporting characters in Steven Seagal films talk. At one point, a jet plane dives in front of a missile aimed at Air Force One, like a Secret Service agent (the way these airplanes maneuver in midair is pretty outrageous. I don’t think 747s can perform U-turns). President Marshall hangs precariously from an open bay door over oblivion, barely managing to keep his grip, not once, but three times. And virtually everything is punctuated by a strain from the main theme, as absurdly patriotic a piece of music as Jerry Goldsmith, or anyone really, has ever composed. Really, listen to it here on YouTube. Reportedly, Goldsmith was a very late hire, after a complete score was turned in by Randy Newman and promptly rejected. He had about twelve days to score the film, and as a result, leaned very heavily on the lietmotif. You’ll hear it near constantly throughout the film, and it’s used all the time elsewhere, at events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl.
If there’s any self-awareness in Air Force One, it’s probably due to Gary Oldman. He’s playing the lead terrorist, Ivan Korushnov, and it’s quite a performance. On the one hand, this character is a sneering Russian stereotype, Oldman’s attempt to give Boris Badenov an internal life. He’s got the expected hissable character traits and dialogue, including this sexist beauty, delivered to Glenn Close’s Vice President: ‘I’m sure you can’t wait for him to get back to making the decisions, so you can stop sweating through that silk blouse of yours!’ But he occasionally makes statements that you kind of have to give him, like how America killed 100,000 Iraqis to save a nickel on gas. These mostly seem like a sign of the times, like someone in the assembly line decided villains are more interesting if they have a point, so give him a point. But Oldman sells them. One scene in particular stands out, where he’s explaining to the President’s daughter that her father is also a murderer, he just does it with a pen. Her response is an applause line, ‘You’re a monster, and my father is a great man. You’re nothing like my father,’ which was easy to take at face value in 1997. After the Obama presidency’s drone warfare program, you can’t help but clock Oldman’s reaction to it. He shuts up, looks at her like he just realized she has no idea what he’s talking about, and leaves it at that. He’s got too much shit going on to explain proportionate responses to this teenager.
So where does all this leave the movie? As I said above, it’s fun to watch. It’s very funny. One of the big Hollywood trends during the peaceful, economic boom of the 90s was jerking ourselves off to America’s assumed greatness. This one goes the farthest, and as result, is the one that feels like satire. You can have a real laugh, imagining then-President Bill Clinton wrestling a semi-automatic gun from a terrorist, or delivering Ford’s famous coup de grace to Oldman (“Get off my plane!”) before snapping his neck with a cargo strap. There’s plenty to enjoy in the sheer audacity of action setpieces, such as the bit where the President heroically gets the civilians on the plane to parachute out the bay door of Air Force One and out of the film, to descend into, I don’t know, the Ural mountain range, it seems. The traitorous Secret Service agent played by Xander Berkeley is never given a motivation, and dies in a final act of cowardice unrelated to said treachery. And it must be said, the CGI effects in this film are some of the worst you’ve ever seen. And they’re not even tough things, like water or fur, but just airplanes. You’ve never seen worse airplanes. These add to the general vibe that this is a cartoon, and not something to take seriously.
Wait, where are we landing?
But of course, that doesn’t mean everyone was in on the joke. Part of the film’s second life has been Donald Trump’s noted love of it. He’s called President Marshall his favorite movie president, because “he stood up for America” and the bombastic Goldsmith score has been used repeatedly by the eternal Trump campaign, most notably when he took the stage to declare victory in the early hours of November 9th, 2016. They asked him to stop, but he didn’t. Sadly, it feels like this is essentially the kind of President he expected to be: someone constantly praised, recognized universally for his greatness, someone for whom good and evil is as binary as a light switch. Ford actually got asked about this, and it’s well worth seeing his response.
So, is there any danger in this sort of idealization, in breaking complicated geopolitical realities into cartoons about how certain countries are born more noble? Looks like! They’ll continue to get made too. How serious, for example, is 300, with its themes of nationalism, isolation and cultural purity? At the time, I thought not at all, but Zack Snyder’s filmography since has made me less sure. There were even a few movies recently that tried to harken back to that simple 90s patriotism, the dueling presidential action flicks White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, although neither of those quite had the stones Air Force One does, choosing to make the president second banana to the real action hero protagonist. The Fallen series has continued to play in this pool ever since as well. But there’s a sourness to them now. Because now, you have to parse which side of the cultural divide the movie falls on, as opposed to Air Force One, which never had to bother picking.
As to Trump, I have a proposal that I think everyone would be happy with: Trump steps down from the actual presidency, and we remake Air Force One, starring him. He’d have fun, someone else can deal with the unpleasantness of running the country, and the rest of us can watch an absolutely insane vanity project. I’d certainly check it out. It’d be like those clips of him on WWE, looking like a silly fat clown to the liberals and like a real tough guy to the MAGA crowd. Trump could even try to convince people it’s based on true events, something that happened in 2017 and the Lamestream Media covered it up. See how many people believe it! This is how we cure the divide. Then maybe we can make delightfully stupid political fantasies like Air Force One again.