Air Force One

Air Force One

He is among the most popular movie stars, Harrison Ford, and he almost achieves the impossible in “Air Force One.” I don’t mean that he saves the day; what I mean is that he almost saves the movie. This demonstrates how star quality can inject new life into worn out cliches and “Air Force One” is jammed with clichés.

The commercials, coming attractions trailers, magazine covers and talk show appearances have informed you about the film’s premise. Gary Oldman plays the leader of a band of terrorists who seize control of Air Force One on its flight back from Moscow. You know it’s up to Ford, as President James Marshall (Vietnam combat hero), to take them on. You know his wife and child are among the hostages and that he has just vowed never to negotiate with terrorists.

So. Since there aren’t any macro surprises in this movie, how about micro-ones? Has director Wolfgang Petersen (“Das Boot,” “In The Line Of Fire”) found a zillion little touches that make the picture work moment by moment while sagging from predetermined beginning to preordained conclusion? Kinda, sometimes.

There are some neat things about “Air Force One,” although I’m not sure I believe them all (bulletproof from the inside? escape pod onboard? parachute out back hatch? Washington to Russia cell phone call while airborne?). Action takes place in lower regions of plane: galley, luggage areas.

There’s also a counterplot set in Washington, where Vice President Glenn Close learns from Attorney General Philip Baker Hall that she may be technically within her rights to consider taking over if it turns out that president is technically ”incapacitated.” And there are some good action sequences involving entering/exiting planes at high altitudes when it wouldn’t be recommended.

But mostly it’s stapled together out of pieces lifted from many other movies about presidents/terrorists/hijackings/hostages/airplanes/politics/cat and mouse chases. It’s a given, for example, that the terrorists will separate and go nosing around on their own, so they can be picked off one by one.

It’s a given that there will be Washington press conferences, so bones of information can be thrown to the seething press. It’s a given that there will be personality flare-ups among lower-level politicians, and dire comments by their advisers (“The element of surprise is a formidable weapon”).

It also resurrects an ancient and reliable favorite: the Choosing of the Wires. In countless other movies we’ve seen this bomb squad hesitates between “Red or black? Red or black?”). This is a big budget movie; it brings back five wires. It’s an emergency and the President has to decide which two to connect in order to save the day. See if you can guess the right two colors: green, yellow, red, white and blue?

The performances are first-rate. Close is effective as the vice president, and Gary Oldman has a couple of nice scenes as the terrorist (“Murder? You took 100,000 lives to save a nickel on the price of a gallon of gas.”). And Harrison Ford is solid and commanding as the president, even if we do wonder why he has to be better at hand to hand combat than all of his Secret Service agents.

Some of the special effects work. In one key scene set near an open doorway on the plane, none of the actors convinced me they thought they were standing next to a 30,000-foot drop. (For one thing, they never looked down, which I think is more or less the first thing I’d do.) A climactic explosion is less than convincing visually. And scenes involving a Russian political prisoner are confusing.

“Air Force One” is to “Die Hard” what “Die Hard” was to other action pictures: It’s better. The director is Wolfgang Petersen (“Das Boot”), who combines skillful storytelling with a nice feel for everyday detail like what happens when someone smokes in outer space. At this point in what has been an especially long feeling summer movie season, I’ve seen enough explosions and showdowns and stunts and special effects for several years.

I saw a movie just last week about a woman in Paris who lost her cat, and you know what? It was more exciting than this one. At least when that cat got up on the roof, it knew enough to look down.

Watch Air Force One For Free On Gomovies.