Jeremy’s Tophunder №18: Air Force One

6 min readApr 11, 2020

Air Force One, beyond the shadow of any doubt, is the stupidest movie on my list.

I have movies on the list that are less believable, but only because they involve science fiction and/or supernatural elements. They ask for some suspension of disbelief right away. Air Force One asks for no such suspension up front. It’s a very straightforward premise. Harrison Ford is the President, and Air Force One gets hijacked by Russian separatist terrorists. Every movie has something I’ll call “the suspension gap.” It’s the distance between the suspension of disbelief the movie asks from you based on the premise and the suspension it asks from you as the plot unfolds. A movie like, say, Star Wars, asks for a big suspension of disbelief right away, but once they establish the rules for the universe the movie occupies, they actually stay pretty consistent. The suspension gap is reasonably low. A movie like, say, Lincoln, is based on a true story and makes a point to stay true to that story — there’s very little suspension required on either end, and as such have about as low of a suspension gap as you can get.

Air Force One might have the biggest suspension gap in the history of cinema. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

Gary Oldman and a team of Russian terrorists kill a Russian television crew and steal their identities. With the help of a rogue secret service agent (Xander Berkley), they are able to get on board Air Force One. The rogue agent quietly kills a few other agents and helps Gary Oldman obtain automatic weapons, which they use to storm the plane.

Like, it’s a movie, but it’s pretty reasonable so far, right?

Okay, here’s where it gets good.

President Harrison Ford gets to Air Force One’s escape pod (which doesn’t exist), but secretly doesn’t enter the pod, staying on board because he wants to protect his wife and daughter. Unbeknownst to the terrorists, President Harrison Ford is a Vietnam War veteran who won the Medal of Honor. You’d think they’d do their research before, you know, attempting to hijacking the most secure aircraft in the world, but yet, here we are. Air Force One lands at Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany, but the terrorists kill the pilot and co-pilot when they won’t take off again. Luckily, one of the terrorists can fly a 747.

President Ford manages to kill a terrorist or two, and uses a Satellite phone to call the White House. While he’s on the phone, one of the terrorists finds him and holds him at gunpoint. President Ford, savvy as always, gets a message to the White House to have the F-15’s fire on Air Force One to trigger the automatic countermeasures so that the terrorist will fall over and President Ford can beat him in a fight. Naturally, everything works exactly according to plan. He then somehow figures out how to dump Air Force One’s fuel by crossing a few wires (I’m -sure- it’s that simple), forcing a mid-air re-fuel. But things go bad! While the terrorists are distracted by the re-fueling process, the hostages begin to escape out of the parachute ramp in the cargo hold (also doesn’t exist). When the terrorists realize, they break away from the re-fueling plane too soon, causing the re-fueling plane to explode in mid-air. And they take President Ford hostage in the process! The terrorists then force President Ford to call the Russian president to get him to release a Kazakh general/dictator from prison (I’m sure the Russian president wanted to do it all along but was just waiting for America’s permission). While the terrorists are distracted in celebration, President/War Veteran Ford attacks! He kills a few terrorists, steals a gun, and chases Gary Oldman to the parachute ramp (which still doesn’t exist). He strangles Gary Oldman with his own parachute and tells him to get off his plane.

So, the terrorists are dead, so the movie’s over now, right? Nope! We’re still on Air Force One with nobody to fly the plane! But don’t worry, President Ford can fly a 747! But wait, now there are more Russian separatists flying MiGs coming to shoot down Air Force One! Luckily, more F-15s arrive just in the nick of time. In the attack, Air Force One is damaged badly enough that it won’t be able to land. Uh-oh. But a plan is devised where another military cargo plane is called to help, and they are able to get the final passengers off Air Force One by, yup, you guessed it, ziplining from Air Force One to the other plane. The President gets his family and his injured Chief of Staff off the plane, but suddenly there are three passengers left, and only time for one more zipline run. But one of them is the rogue secret service agent! He kills Willaim H. Macy (who is in the movie, by the way) and the zipline helper guy! He’s going to take the last zipline to the other plane! But he forgot about one thing — President Harrison Ford. President Ford punches him a few times, grabs the last zipline, which rips itself out of the wall just seconds before Air Force One crashes into the Caspian Sea. President Ford holds on for dear life (because he obviously didn’t have enough time to actually secure the harness) while the helper plane reels him in. They pull him aboard safely, the helper plane changes its call sign to Air Force One and everyone goes home happy.

You get all that? You get why I love this movie yet?

Hold on, that’s not even everything I love about this movie.

I didn’t even get to the C storyline where Vice President Glenn Close and Secretary of Defense what’s-his-name (who seems -very, very aware- that he’s in a movie at all times) argue about whether or not to invoke the 25th Amendment because they aren’t sure Harrison Ford can make rational decisions while he and his family are being held hostage.
Why was Xander Berkley helping the terrorists? Was he a Russian sleeper agent? Was he in it for money? Was he passed over for a promotion and decided he wanted to kill President Ford? Here’s the best part — it’s literally never addressed. It never comes up. Not once.
All the hostages that escaped on parachutes — what the hell happened to them? They just land in the middle of Kazakhstan? Then what? Do they just take an Uber home? All the people in the situation room are solely focused on whether or not President Ford is safe, which I understand, sure. But literal nobody is looking into the 30-odd American citizens that just jumped out of a plane into potentially hostile territory?

If you give me the elevator pitch for this movie — Harrison Ford is the President and Air Force One gets hijacked — I’m in. That’s all the information I need. Anything that gets layered on top only makes the movie better, even if (or perhaps especially if) that extra stuff is preposterous and stupid.

Is Air Force One the worst movie on my list? I don’t think so. I have four Michael Bay movies in my Top 100. (Yes. Four.) But it’s close. It is the highest-ranked movie on my list that I fully acknowledge is not a good movie, and in fact I love it even more because of how bad it is. I love bad movies. I can’t help it. I said from the beginning, I’m going to be ranking movies that I like, not movies that I think are “the best.” Air Force One is far from the best. But it’s my 18th-favorite movie ever.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

9. Saving Private Ryan

11. The Big Short

13. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

17. Ocean’s 11

18. Air Force One

22. Remember The Titans

24. Apollo 13

27. All The President’s Men