Executive Decision

[KLAXXON]

A ruthless terrorist group are holding hostage the passengers on board a 747 airliner. Using an experimental docking aircraft, an elite team must make an air-to-air transfer to save four hundred lives in a do-or-die mission.

On September 11th 2001 something more than two towers
collapsed. It would take years for the real impact of those events is
still to be fully grasped, but even today is quite obvious that some
of 1980s and 1990s Hollywood films are going to be viewed
differently and for some is debatable whether they are going to be
viewed at all. Among those titles is EXECUTIVE DECISION, 1996
action thriller directed by Stuart Baird.

The plot begins in Trieste when the group of Chechen smugglers
gets wiped out by the elite unit of American counter-terrorist
commandoes, led by Lt. Colonel Austin Travis (played by Steven
Seagal). The real object of the mission - locating nerve gas stolen
from ex-USSR - is not achieved. Military intelligence expert Dr.
David Grant (played by Kurt Russell) is much more successful; due
to his excellent work, US has captured Jaffa (played by Andreas
Katsulas), leader of Middle Eastern terrorists. Jaffa's liberation is
the aim of his remaining followers, led by fanatical Nagy (played by
David Suchet) and they hijack Boeing 747 on route to Washington.
Grant, however, realises that this was just a cover for terrrorists'
real plan - they have smuggled the nerve gas on the plan and want
to use the jetliner to crash in Washington D.C., spread the toxic
gas and thus kill millions of people. For US government the obvious
alternative is to shoot down the plane and thus sacrifice hundreds
of passengers. The other alternative is to use experimental F117X
plane, equipped with the device that could quietly hook with other
planes in flight and thus allow counter-terrorist commandoes to
board the jetliner and take down hijackers. Grant and plane's
designer Dennis Cahill (played by Oliver Platt) accompany Travis
and his team during this desperate stunt. Things don't go as
planned - during the boarding, device fails and Travis dies with
half of his team; the remainder, including Grant and Cahill is stuck
on the jetliner. Grant, who is complete amateur when it comes to
fighting terrorists in the field, must improvise new plan in order to
defeat them.

EXECUTIVE DECISION could have been just another among
hundreds of DIE HARD clones. The set up in this film is more-or-
less the same - seemingly omnipotent villains take control of an
isolate space until their plans are foiled by single individual. In
most of DIE HARD films single individual is some kind of
policemen, ex-commandoes or people whose past indicate that
they could take care of villains. Here this character is played by
Steven Seagal and the audience is pre-conditioned to believe that
he could indeed take down terrorists. But that would effectively
ended film in couple of minutes. So, Silver wisely decides to get rid
of Seagal's character who passes the torch to unlikely hero in the
form of Kurt Russell's mild-mannered bureaucrat. Russell plays
this role very well, relying more on his intellectual image than
muscles in the same manner as his character who uses more brain
and less physical power to achieve his task. Because of that
EXECUTIVE DECISION not only lasts two hours longer, but those
two hours are for the most part more exciting and interesting than
we are accustomed for this kind of films. Stuart Baird is quite
comfortable in his first directorial effort and the supporting cast is
very good, including J.T. Walsh in rather thankless role of US
senator. Unfortunately, otherwise reliable David Suchet is quite
pale and unimpressive in the role of the villain, while Halle Berry
sleepwalks in the role of heroic stewardess.

The biggest flaw of the film, however, is something beyond
filmmakers' responsibility. They, like the people whose job was to
know better, didn't imagine real life situation so similar and in the
same time different from the events portrayed in this film. Some
plot elements in EXECUTIVE DECISION have frightening
resemblance to last year's tragedy, but there is a difference. In
real life, unlike Hollywood movies, heroes don't always win and
villains sometimes carry out their dastardly plans. The audience
was reminded of this on September 11th 2001 and because of that
watching EXECUTIVE DECISION might leave viewers embittered
or saddened rather than entertained. On the other hand, prophetic
quality of this film might even be comforting. In the plot, the task of
fighting evil and saving lives is left to the common man instead of
superhero; and on September 11th 2001 this task was carried out
by common people and we might argue that EXECUTIVE DECISION
was one of those rare Hollywood films that got it right.


Kurt Russell ... Dr. Phil. David Grant
Steven Seagal ... Lt. Colonel Austin Travis
Halle Berry ... Jean, Flight Attendant
John Leguizamo ... Captain Rat
Oliver Platt ... Dennis Cahill
Joe Morton ... Sergeant 'Cappy' Matheny
B.D. Wong ... Sergeant Louie
Len Cariou ... Secretary of Defense Charles White
Whip Hubley ... Sergeant Baker
Andreas Katsulas ... El Sayed Jaffa
Mary Ellen Trainor ... Allison, Flight Attendant
Marla Maples ... Nancy, Flight Attendant (as Marla Maples Trump)
J.T. Walsh ... Senator Mavros
Ingo Neuhaus ... Doc
William James Jones ... Catman



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[trouty]

any one else notice this is not TROY?